It’s World Cup time again, the three games a day (actually make that four from tomorrow) groups make it a great time for the football fan who has the free time to watch the matches as they come at you thick and fast – there are other considerations with this particular tournament which I’ll come to later mind.
So far, we’ve had host nation Qatar being easily beaten by Ecuador in the opening game, England looking very impressive in thrashing a poor Iran side 6-2 and the Netherlands and Senegal playing out what looked like being a dismal goalless draw until two late errors by Chelsea’s Bernard Mendy handed the Dutch a 2-0 win. Oh, and we’ve also had the USA being held 1-1 by some place called Wales (I’m sure there must have been a few supporters of the opposition who had never heard of us before)!
Now and again as I watched the England and Netherlands matches, I’d have to remind myself that we were playing later on today, but it was only when I saw the team out on the pitch for the national anthem, that it really registered that Wales were part of this thing.
My first ever memory is of a nasty accident that happened to one of the kids at my third birthday party. That would have been some six or seven months after Wales had reached the Quarter Finals of the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, so while I am old enough to have lived through Wales’ first appearance at a World Cup, I have no memory of it whatsoever.
I make this the fifteenth World Cup I’ve watched (the first one was in 1966) and, for the first fourteen, it was a little like looking through a window at a party you weren’t invited to. That didn’t bother me mind because I’d quickly accepted that World Cups were for other countries, not us. If I’m being honest, I’ve never felt the sense of desolation that others have experienced when Wales’ qualification hopes were dashed for another four years because I’ve never had any real expectation that we’d ever make it to one.
I blame Joe Jordan to a large extent for that, the penalty he earned by punching the ball in the Welsh penalty area in 1977 instilled my fatalistic attitude towards Wales and the World Cup – that’s why Paul Bodin’s penalty miss in 1993 did not hurt me as much as it did many others.
Wales didn’t do World Cups in my mind and I long since became reconciled to me never seeing my country play in the sporting world’s greatest tournament.
Then, on a rainy Sunday in June we had more than our fair share of the luck we didn’t usually get in World Cup qualification to beat a country the rest of the world were backing and we were there – as alluded to above, it was only at a minute to seven tonight that I really believed we were mind!
As for the game, it reminded me quite a lot of the 1-1 draw with Switzerland last year to start our second successive Euros off. We were second best for long periods of that game and had to come back from a goal down and it was the same tonight – although, I’d say USA were more dominant in the first half than the Swiss, while our second half fight back was stronger tonight than it was that afternoon in Baku.
There seems to be general agreement that Robert Page got his selection wrong tonight and, believe me or believe me not, that was exactly what I thought when I first saw the team about an hour before kick off.
To me, it looked like a side picked to not lose the game, rather than try to win it – the omission of Keiffer Moore left us without a focal point to play off and was particularly puzzling.
I must admit to not being confident about tonight because America are a young, fit side that presses high up the pitch and we all know that Wales’ two most influential players are, to put it diplomatically, slowing down as they get well into their thirties. Put that with the absence through injury of Joe Allen and we didn’t look well equipped to cope with the American dynamism and pressing.
Apparently, the plan in Moore’s absence was to play around the press, but it never looked like happening. We started slowly and were lucky to get to the ten minute mark with the game still goalless as a below par Joe Rodon headed against Wayne Hennessey and then a few seconds later, Norwich’s Josh Sargent headed against an upright.
America were looking way too quick and powerful for a lethargic Welsh team, but the superiority was not being reflected in terms of serious goalmouth action until Christian Pulisic slid a lovely ball through to Tim Weah, the son of George, who calmly flicked past Hennessey to put his side ahead on thirty six minutes.
It was a question of Wales getting to half time just the one down from there and, having done so, Page brought on Moore for Dan James and the whole game changed. The American centrebacks had an easy time of it for forty-five minutes, but life became a struggle for them after that as Moore occupied them both in the air and on the deck.
With Ethan Ampadu having one of his best games in a Welsh shirt, the midfield was not the disaster area it had been before the break, but, rather like the Americans, there wasn’t a great deal to suggest that Wales could score now that they were beginning to get on top.
Ben Davies did force goalkeeper Matt Turner to tip his header over just after the hour mark and Moore would probably have been disappointed to have headed the resultant Harry Wilson corner just over after getting to the ball in front of Turner, but as the game ticked into the last ten minutes, it was hard to see where an equaliser was going to come from.
However, on eighty-two minutes, the old stagers Ramsey and Bale combined to earn a penalty. Up to then, the challenge of a World Cup had not proved incentive enough for Wales’ best two players to roll back the years. Truth be told, they’d both been pretty anonymous and neither could have had any complaints if they’d been subbed earlier, but Ramsey was able to flick a Brennan Johnson throw in on to Bale who drew centreback Walter Zimmerman into a rash challenge for what was a clear penalty.
Bale nervelessly put away the spot kick after a long delay and Wales might have won it when a cute Moore backheel sent sub Johnson clear down the right, but the angle was always against him and Turner was able to deal with his shot.
Johnson’s shot was one of just three on target efforts by Wales, but that was two more than the USA managed for all of their early superiority and I’d say that, in the end, Wales deserved their draw.
So, where does it leave our group? Wanting England to beat USA on Friday certainly to ensure their qualification before they play us and needing to beat Iran a few hours earlier when the temperature is going to be thirty degrees plus apparently.
If it’s that hot, our team with its combination of injury prone thirty something superstars and a nucleus of players not getting enough regular football will find it tough going. While there are always one or two sides at major tournaments who have a nightmare and perform nowhere near as well as they were expected to and it may be Iran are one of those this time, we can’t expect them to be as bad as England made them look. I think there’s a good chance that qualification in second place may come down to goal difference, but I would still gladly accept a single goal win on Friday.
Talking of Iran, the pleasure of seeing Wales at a World Cup is reduced a little for me because it’s being held where it is and includes countries like Iran with their shameful human rights record. Disgracefully, the corrupt FIFA got itself into a position whereby they were threatening captains of the seven European teams that were planning to have their skippers wear “one love” armbands advocating equality for all regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation with mandatory yellow cards.
This threat did the trick as far as FIFA were concerned and you can understand the seven countries (which included Wales and England) backing down to an extent, but I’d have loved to have seen them force FIFA’s hand by basically telling them to eff off. How would the organisation which only awarded the tournament to Qatar in the first place because of the bungs they received have reacted to that? How could they have reacted given that the consequences of them cracking down like they threatened to would have been disastrous for their gravy train? FIFA in its current incarnation is, hopefully, living on borrowed time and being forced to discipline players for advocating basic human rights would have, surely, accelerated the process.
Away from the World Cup, there’s still plenty of football being played. At the exact time Wales were playing America, City’s under 21s were turning out at Eppleton Colliery Welfare Ground against Sunderland in their latest Premier League Cup game. A couple of goals by Caleb Hughes, the second a free kick from thirty yards, were enough to give us a 2-0 win to follow up on a 4-1 win for the Under 18s at Millwall on Saturday where Cole Fleming, Dylan Lawlor, Tanatswa Nyahuhwah and Cody Twose were the goalscorers.
City’s women’s team continued their unbeaten start to the season on Thursday night with a 9-0 win over Abergavenny Ladies in a game played at Cardiff City Stadium in front of a crowd of over 5,000 – Phoebe Poole got a hat trick, Rihanne Oakley and Eliza Colley got two each and there were also goals for Danielle Green and Eliza Atkins. Then, on Sunday, there was a 3-1 win over Briton Ferry Llansawel in the Adnan Cup with further goals from Poole and Atkins plus one from Megan Bowen.
Also on Sunday, Callum Robinson got the goal as the Republic of Ireland laboured to a 1-0 win in Malta – there was some game time for Callum O’Dowda as well.
In the Hughadmit South Wales Alliance, AFC Porth went down 6-4 at mid table Cardiff Airport in the Premier Division, while Treherbert Boys and Girls Club moved up to fourth in the First Division by winning 6-2 at struggling AFC Whitchurch.
