Cardiff City mauve and yellow army.

    The suspicion remains that off field blunders made qualification for the last under 21 Euros so much harder than it might have been and now, with them starting the current campaign with 6-2 and 7-0 home defeats, those mistakes are looking very far reaching in their consequences.

Similarly, nothing will convince me that the FAW made things tougher for the senior squad for their World Cup qualification campaign by arranging friendlies against the likes of Canada and England with the negative consequences for Play Off draws that defeat in those games brings.

So, what was a tough ask to top the qualification group anyway becomes all the harder when what I’ll call dubious decisions made by administrators, and maybe on field management staff get added t the mix.

Truthfully though, despite the efforts of the media after the game, to make tonight’s 4-2 home loss into something that I don’t think it was, I felt Belgium had their easiest game against Wales since their 2-0 win here when James Collins was sent off in something like 2013.

Being frank, it was more evidence of two things. First, Wales’ four games this season – Kazakhstan, Canada, England and Belgium, have been pretty disastrous individually and collectively and to me they offer all of the proof you need that we’re playing worse  now than when the group started.

Ben Davies captained his country on the occasion of his 100th cap and drew the short straw of having to mark Jeremy Doku who had shown over in Belgium in June that there aren’t many tougher wingers to face in world football currently.

Davies had a tough evening of it which ended early when he went off injured around the 65 minute mark and I’d say appreciation of his contribution was probably raised a notch or two as we struggled to contain the Man City winger in the captain’s absence with Sorba Thomas and Jay DeSilva both having, a largely unsuccessful go at containing the Man City flyer..

Second place now becomes our priority and there was a little bit of good news on that score as Kazakhstan went to North Macedonia and drew 1-1, so, assuming were able to beat Lietchtenstein, we will need to beat the North Macedonians to get second and an easier Play Off draw.

For eight minutes, all went better that any one could have hoped for as balls rolled about a foot wide of either Belgian upright for corners that came to nothing. Ben Cabango might have scored from one of them, but when the energetic Mark Harris earned a third set piece, Joe Rodon powered in Sorba Thomas’ delivery with a firm header from eight yards.

Unfortunately, Wales were then pushed back as much through their habit of giving the ball away in dangerous areas, but when Belgium were presented with a way back into the game, it was via what I’ll call a typical modern day VAR penalty decision for handball after the sort of ball to hand incident at very close quarters which never used to be given before they started looking at incidents from about fifteen different angles. 

There seems little point in getting annoyed at such decisions as they are usually given these days and I would have been very upset not to have got a penalty for the incident if it had struck a Belgian defender, rather than Ethan Ampadu, on the hand.

Kevin DeBruyne took the chance to add to the what seems to be huge number of goals he’s scored at the Canton Stand end of the ground and, having, not been too convincing until then, the visitors got on top to the extent that about fifteen minutes after falling behind, they had the lead.

So, while North Macedonia base their hopes of winning the group on a defence that only conceded once against the Belgians, we continue to hand out early goals like presents – we conceded three times over in Belgium in the first thirty minutes, England also scored three in twenty minutes on Thursday and now it was against Belgium again in the first quarter of the game.

Although all of the early goals conceded could not be put down to our desire to keep a high line, the room Doku got as he moved on to what was little more than a long ball into our left channel was pretty damning as the winger was able to pick out Meunier who shot high beyond Karl Darlow from fifteen yards.

Belgium wasted chances to add to their lead and there was a great block by Rodon to keep it at 2-1 before a Welsh improvement saw Jordan James and Harry Wilson both go close before half time.

The first half had been an open affair with Wales looking capable of scoring a second or even third goal even though they were generally second best, but we struggled to create much after the break as the chances tended to dry up whereas the visitors continued to threaten. 

In the end, Wales conceded a total of eight goals to the Belgians, but three of them were penalties for handball. If two of the spot kicks could be deemed to be bad luck, James could have no complains about the third one as he instinctively reached for the ball for an award nobody argued with – if anything, it was the shoddy defending beforehand that was more to blame.

DeBruyne scored his second penalty to all but end the game as a contest and, fool that I am, I began to think Bellamy may bring Rubin Colwill on. He didn’t of course, but just as the game went into it’s eighty ninth minute two, belated subs, Kieffer Moore and Nathan Broadhead combined for the latter to make it 3-2.

Indeed, with the fourth official signaling seven extra minutes to be played, Belgium broke straight to the opposite end of the pitch through a very lightly manned Welsh defence to kill any excitement as Anthony Trosard made it 4-2 to virtually ensure Belgium’s qualification.

Pride of place in a none too successful international break should probably go to our under 19s who aew nma=king a decent fist of a mini tournament involving Switzerland, the Netherlands and England. A 5-2 loss to the Swiss in their first game did no9t represent the best of starts, but this was followed by a fine 2-0 vistory over the Dutch with Mannie Barton scoring a enalty in both matches.