After the highs of reaching the World Cup, the manager must find some answers after a poor start to Euro 2024 qualifying“We need to remember how to enjoy this again,” said my friend Garmon, pointing at his plastic cup of lager and the exposed concrete concourse of the Cardiff City Stadium’s Canton Stand. “Because we won’t be enjoying the football.” Wales were 2-1 down to Armenia at half-time, losing to a team 71 places below them in the rankings, in a Gouldian throwback to the mid-90s, when Bobby’s team made a habit of losing to Georgia, Moldova, and Leyton Orient, and getting locked in the prison Bobby Gould had inexplicably decided to train in.Wales hadn’t lost a home European Championship...
Home loss to team ranked 97th in the world adds to poor run of form making Monday’s game in Turkey feel make-or-breakThe inquest into Wales’s humbling by Armenia began in earnest on Saturday morning, a few hours before an afternoon flight to Samsun, the Turkish city on the Black Sea where suddenly it all feels rather make or break when it comes to qualifying for Euro 2024.The grave mood in the stands at full time in Cardiff, as the remnants of a sold-out crowd wondered whether they had inadvertently been teleported back to the bruising days when Wales were nestled below Guatemala and Guyana in the Fifa rankings, married with what is now a bleak forecast. Continue reading...
A tactical tweak against Wales turned England into fun entertainers and for that Southgate deserves huge creditIn praise of Gareth. Can we take a moment to do this now? Can we just suck that sweetness down? Because this was a very good game for England and their manager, a manager who has, for all his success, his status as pretty much the most sensible person currently active in English public life, had a weirdly vitriolic year and a half.It was a good game for Gareth Southgate because England were bad at first, and then they were good, and good thanks to a stroke of tactical switchery that broke the game open. It was good because players Southgate brought in ended...
Great was reduced to a pawn on a chessboard of kings and queens as his side crashed out of World Cup after England loss“You’re going home in the morning,” came the chorus from the England supporters after Marcus Rashford fired in an early second-half free‑kick and again, a little bit louder, when Phil Foden doubled their advantage 98 seconds later. It was salt into the wound for the bank of Wales fans at the other end – six‑and-a-bit blocks of the Red Wall – for whom a first World Cup finals in 64 years has turned out to be a rather dispiriting and demoralising experience. Was it really worth the wait? Gareth Bale will no doubt ponder the same question...
Wales had hoped for exotic World Cup opposition but must now aim to beat neighbours for the first time in 38 yearsI watched Wales’s second game of the World Cup at Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff. The same venue I saw the Strokes, Afrika Bambaataa and Roots Manuva play in my 20s, but there has never been a headliner at Clwb like Wales v Iran. As I walked through Cardiff city centre last Friday morning I saw pubs fill and football fans greet each other, alongside office workers purchasing that pillar of the 21st-century Welsh economy, the Boots Meal Deal. People having a pint at 9.35am because Wales are playing in the World Cup against opposition we haven’t met since 1978....