Limp Wales making no progress under Craig Bellamy.

Posted on September 28, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

Although Wales couldn’t have any complaints about their defeat in Portugal on Thursday, there were crumbs of comfort to be taken. 

For example, we probably finished the stronger team and would have escaped with an unlikely point if Lewis Koumas and Dan James had not botched a simple chance between them when they had no goalkeeper and a single defender in front of them after Brennan Johnson’s lob had bounced back off the crossbar.

Tonight in Copenhagen though against what I’d call no more than a pretty good Danish side (their recent results tell you that), there were no consolations to be taken from a lucky 2-0 loss – I say lucky because it could have been a lot worse than a two goal defeat.

Wales looked a bad side tonight – they were flat in their attitude, slipshod in their passing, had a press that was played through far too easily, lacked composure and at times defended ridiculously deep.

Sorry to keep on bringing this up, but watching what appears to be a ream in decline tonight, I can’t help recalling that “this is as bad as well be” comment of Craig Bellamy’s following the very encouraging performance in drawing 0-0 with Turkey in his very first game in charge.

Well, after a run of mediocre performances, with one exception, against opposition a level below what we’ve faced this week, dating back a year, we definitely have been worse than we were against Turkey plenty of times.

Bearing that in mind, it wasn’t realistic to have high expectations going into this international break and, to an extent, that explains why the Portugal game was regarded in some quarters almost as a step in the right direction. Sadly, tonight marked a return to reality and at the moment, I’m struggling to think of a worse performance from a Bellamy team in a competitive game than this.

This international break is becoming something to be endured and the Bellamy train now limps on to Cardiff to face Norway and then the return game with the Danes with Portugal due to play here as well in November.

Although the days when we could contemplate us winning that trio of matches at Cardiff City Stadium are probably gone for ever now, I’d be pretty confident ordinarily about us being able to avoid defeat in two or maybe all three of them – after all, we beat and drew with Croatia and had a couple of draws with Belgium at home with post 2016 teams, so I’m not being pie in the sky there.

However, after tonight, I’d be pleasantly surprised if we avoid defeat in one of the three – again, there’ll be those who probably think I’ve taken leave of my senses when I say this, but I’d back the current City team to retain possession against that Danish side better than Wales did tonight.

I’m sure Craig Bellamy would disagree with that because, unless Joel Colwill has picked up an injury in training with the squad, he clearly doesn’t rate the Wales qualified players City have in that area of the park.

I say that, because Bellamy picked Joel in his original squad and then called up Charlie Savage of Reading when there were a variety of injury drop outs from it. The logical conclusion to be drawn by this course of events would be that the younger Colwill was higher up the Welsh midfield pecking order than Robbie Savage’s son is. 

However, this morning we learned that David Brooks, also presumably out with injury, and Joel were not in the 23 man match squad (Cian Ashford also missed out for the second time), but Charlie Savage was in there along with old faithfuls like Liam Cullen, Mark Harris and Wes Burns – not only that, Savage made it into the starting eleven! I should say here as well that this was giving Savage an almost impossible task as he has, apparently, played little more than an hour for League One side Reading so far this season.

During the summer there was some speculation about Charlie Savage joining City – he had a lucky escape there because if he had been Charlie Savage of Cardiff City now, it’s hard to see how he’d have won his first competitive cap today! 

As it is, I suppose Craig Bellamy must be grateful that Joel’s older brother wasn’t available today because then he would have had to explain to an incredulous Welsh media why it was that Charlie Savage, not Rubin Colwill, was accompanying Ethan Ampadu in the Welsh central midfield!

Wales also brought in Chris Mepham for Ben Cabango, Connor Roberts for Jay De Silva, Dan James for Jordan James {who surely would have been a better bet than Savage in central midfield?), Sorba Thomas for Brooks and Kieffer Moore for Lewis Koumas with Josh Sheehan being the one to make way for Savage.

While you can argue about the merits of individuals in terms of who was being replaced and was who was coming in, it seems to me that the cumulative effect of all of these changes was to leave us with a weaker team. 

Bellamy justified the changes in a pre game interview by saying, with such a short turn around between matches, players who started on Thursday would find it hard to have the required amount of intensity for an opponent like Denmark – I could see the sense in that, but it looked to me as if there were certain individuals, as well as the team as a whole, that did not provide enough of  that quality, certainly in the opening thirty minutes or so.

I’ll not take much time describing the game. When Wales did manage to mount a fairly promising attack down their right, they ran out of ideas and belief when they got into the attacking third, they were then easily dispossessed and played around by opponents who looked far more powerful and quicker than them. The counter attack was finished by a fierce volley from twelve yards by Gustav Isaksen which flew into the net past Danny Ward only for the goal to be ruled by VAR for a marginal offside call. Wales got lucky again a minute later when Mikel Damsgaard’s shot rebounded off an upright, but as the first half went into its final few minutes the visitors had their best spell of the game as Thomas shot just wide and Roberts saw his close range shot turned over by keeper Jorgensen after our best move of the game.

Neco Williams forced Jorgensen into a save at the start of the second period, but the full back, who will always be the first or second name on my team sheet was having one of his worst ever games for his country as he was been given a tough time by Isaksen and then gave away the free kicks which led to both goals.

In both cases, Williams’ fouls looked like needless ones to me. Both free kicks were taken by Damsgaard from very similar positions on the Welsh left and in both cases it seemed to me that our cause was not helped by how deep our defensive line was. 

To be fair, Damsgaard’s delivery for the first one in particular was excellent as the unlucky Ben Davies diverted the ball into his own goal with his arm.

For the second, the ball was headed towards goal only for Moore to head off the line and then things went into slow motion as Isaksen’s subsequent volley was hit nowhere near as sweetly as his earlier one as his shot got a deflection off Ampadu I think it was, and then slowly looped in off the under side of the crossbar. 

Williams had a goal disallowed after that and we came close as a Thomas cross flew about a foot wide with the keeper looking beaten and Roberts saw another shot saved by Jorgenson, but Wales ended a well beaten team despite the scoreline hinting at a closer game than it really was.

In the Cymru Premier, Cambrian recovered from last week’s 9-1 mauling with a 4-3 home win over Llandudno, although it became harder work than it should have been after Alex Bonthron’s hat trick helped put them 4-0 up after forty seven minutes.

In the Highadmit South Wales Alliance, both Treherbert Boys and Girls Club in the Premier League and Treorchy Boy’s and Girls Club in Division One East were beaten by the league leaders – the former going down 4-2 at Pontyclun FC, while the latter are still awaiting their first point after losing 5-2 at Red Lion BGC..

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Not the thrashing that was feared, but Wales can have few complaints about latest loss.

Posted on September 25, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

I spent most of the first half of this decade looking forward to international breaks because watching Wales play offered a relief from what was often dross being served up Cardiff City every week – watching Wales was usually a pleasure in a way watching City wasn’t.

Time have changed though. The results may not quite be there, but watching City play these days is an enjoyable experience, whereas Wales are down to a mediocre, by the standards of the last thirteen of fourteen years, thirty eighth in the world rankings and it looks more likely that they’ll drop further before any move in the right direction commences.

After the defeat against Romania in June to bring the 2025/26 international season to an end, I contrasted Craig Bellamy’s second season in charge with his first and concluded that it wasn’t just results that had declined, it was also performances and standards. 

After a summer where it looked like Bellamy was prepared to head off to Burnley despite all his talk about how much managing his country meant to him (to be fair, Bellamy said this week that he turned Burnley down, rather than, as was reported at the time, negotiations between the two parties stalled), it was hard to come into this international break with much enthusiasm. The penalty shoot out defeat at the Semi Final stage of the Play Offs against a pretty ordinary Bosnia side was made all the harder to take by a widespread feeling that Bellamy had got his selection and substitutions wrong.

Getting back to the top grouping in the  Nations League is probably Craig Bellamy’s biggest achievement as Wales boss, but with fixtures against Portugal, Norway and Denmark twice during this break, it’s hard to see where a belief restoring victory is going to come from before club fixtures start taking priority again.

Last time Wales were in with Europe’s big boys in this competition, they were pretty competitive, but ended up with just a single point from their six matches and my own view is that we can expect something similar, or worse, this time around.

However, while I wouldn’t say we were great by any means, we did go to Lisbon tonight and only lost by a single goal to the defending Champions Portugal. 

It was interesting to hear Robert Earnshaw say after the game that, despite the frightening array of world stars in their ranks, modern Portuguese sides are flawed outfits because I’ve been feeling something similar for getting on for twenty years – they have trouble blending all of those great individuals into as effective a team as it should be.

It was there again to see tonight, Wales were quite lucky to get to half time just the one goal down and, if you’d have asked me then what I thought the full time score would be, I would have said three or four nil.

As it was, once Cristiano Ronaldo had a goal correctly disallowed by VAR for offside around the hour mark, the Portugese became careless and error prone for the rest of the game and Wales had two or three opportunities to equalise .

In what the television commentators said were physically taxing conditions due to the high temperature and humidity, Wales were often not as convincing in their passing as they usually are and so for two thirds and more of the proceedings, there seemed to be atmosphere akin to “oh well, at least they’re not murdering us”, whereas, with a bit more belief, composure and clarity, Wales might have got something from the game.

For a short while at the start, Wales forced their hosts back with a combination of a passing game of a standard they could not maintain and an effective and aggressive pressing of the Portugese keeper and defence.

When the hosts started to impose themselves, an impression I’d gained during the World Cup reasserted itself – hardly surprisingly, Ronaldo at 41 is not the player he once was. 

Watching at home, the atmosphere around the ground seemed a little odd. It was as if a good proportion of the crowd had just come along to get a glimpse of Cristiano. So it was then, that there was a determination that Ronaldo had to score and, at times, it felt like a significant number in attendance were Ronaldo fans rather than Portugal fans.

At times, it felt like Wales were just being the biggest of all party poopers, but there was still a football match taking place and, ever so slowly, we asserted ourselves to the extent that most of those just turning up to watch Cristiano wanted the final whistle to be blown by the end.

Portugal were beginning to rouse themselves in the seven or eight minutes after Wales had pressed them back and on seventeen minutes, they hit the front with Ethan Ampadu (who was unusually poor in the first half before improving after the break) missing a tackle to allow Nuno Mendes to slip a pass to Joao Felix, who took the ball on a little before, shooting low past Danny Ward from twenty yards. I must admit I was surprised to see Ward beaten with a well struck, but clearly speculative, shot, but replays showed it was aided by a slight deflection off Ben Davies. 

That deflection probably meant that Ward could not have saved it, but maybe a better one could have? Karl Darlow isn’t great with the ball at his feet, but, on tonight’s evidence he’s a big improvement on Ward – while the lack of a real aerial presence up front made Ward’s task more difficult, his long kicking invariably found an opponent and his short passing was unconvincing. That said, with Darlow absent through injury, Ward would be my choice to play tonight, but that’s just an admission really about how poor the standard of Welsh goalkeeping has become and it’s an indictment of the FAW and their goalkeeping coaches that a true international standard keeper hasn’t come through their system for round twenty years.

For about an hours playing time after that goal, it appeared as if the height of Wales’ ambitions was to keep the margin of defeat down. In the injured Harry Wilson’s absence, David Brooks was the player most likely to be, to use modern parlance, a difference maker, but, disappointingly, he had barely any influence on the game and we only started to look like we might be able to threaten the Portugese after he went off. 

Brennan Johnson played the whole game and made slightly more impact than he usually does, but you’d hardly believe he was someone who has cost close to £100 million in transfer fees during his career on this evidence.

Johnson’s big moment came when Wales really carved open the Portugese defence for the only time in the game. I thought his first touch wasn’t great, but maybe I’m being harsh there. As it was, Johnson did well to lob onto the crossbar from almost on the byeline, but when the ball dropped, Lewis Koumas (who, along with Ben Davies and Jay De Silva, I had as candidates for our best player) and sub Dan James got in each others way thereby enabling Ruben Dias to scrape the ball off the line to make a clearance he should have been given no chance of making.

The small number of threatening situations Wales managed besides that tended to be ruined by a poor final ball – the worst instance occurring really late on when another sub Kieffer Moore failed to pick out an unmarked James with what was a fairly simple pass to execute.

There were encouraging signs from Wales, but it seems to me that our general tempo of play has become slower than it was two years ago when we played our first games under Craig Bellamy. To be fair, the energy sapping conditions conditions probably had something to do with that, but it’s now ten months since we thrashed North Macedonia 7-1 and we’ve not come remotely close to matching the attacking intensity and finishing quality we showed that night since.

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