The first thing that needs to be said about Wales’ opening game in their Euros 21 campaign is that a 1-1 draw with Switzerland today in boiling Baku was a great outcome for us for all sorts of reasons.
First, there was my use of the word “boiling”. It may have been five o clock in the afternoon when the match started, but it was still thirty degrees centigrade apparently. Increasingly, I’m not liking the format of this tournament in terms of where the matches are being played because, to be frank, with, for example, England and Scotland, not having to leave the UK for the duration of their qualifying groups, it is hardly representative of a level playing field when some teams are being allowed so many home matches and so many others are having to travel to far flung corners of Europe to play theirs. In a decade or two’s time, youngsters are going to be asking what on earth were Wales and Switzerland doing playing in front of six thousand spectators in Baku in sauna like conditions in a tournament that was not being staged in Azerbaijan? It’s a question I’m struggling to answer.
Secondly, Italy beat Turkey in the tournament opener as easily as the 3-0 score line indicates. Now, I think that was more because the Italians were ominously good rather than their opponents were awful, but it might just be that the much hyped Turks are nowhere near as good as they’ve been built up to be. Either way, our opponents on Wednesday for a match which should be easier to cope with weather wise because of the 8 pm kick off time, are going to be under tremendous pressure against a Welsh team that, hopefully, will be in good heart after today’s game.
Thirdly, and very tellingly for me, we drew today despite being second best for long periods and the Swiss will, rightly, be both frustrated and disappointed that they didn’t get their campaign off to the winning start which, honestly, they deserved.
I’m reading plenty of criticism of the Welsh performance on the messageboards tonight, in particular of the two players who represented the 2 in what I think what was supposed to be a 4-2-3-1 formation.
There’s two ways of looking at that. On the one hand, we’re currently ranked seventeenth in the world having been fixtures in the top twenty for the last five years or so. Therefore, we should be consistent qualifiers for tournaments like this and should be reaching the knock out stages of such competitions because we’re clearly among the top sixteen teams taking part.
For me though, there’s a bit more to it than that. Everyone connected with the Welsh senior side and all of those working with the various age group teams deserves great credit for enabling the situation Welsh football has found itself in since we qualified for the 2016 Euros to occur – we’re in a Welsh football golden age and there’s a sense of entitlement in the some of today’s criticism that fails to recognise this. We’ve been lucky in some ways to have had one truly world class player who was right up there with the best on the planet for much of the time I’m talking about and other very gifted individuals who are proven to be fine players at this level, but none of them are getting any younger..
Beyond that, we have real competition for places in most areas, but, whereas the 2016 side were, unlike so many of the better Welsh teams I’ve seen, pretty strong in every area of the pitch, this one is in the mould of all of the others – more than decent in most parts of the team, but not really up to scratch in the others. Certainly, on today’s evidence, we’re a long way short of world top twenty standard in what I’ll call defensive midfield.
MAYA regulars reading this will probably let out a collective groan here as they realise that, having spent nine months and more bemoaning inadequate midfields at Cardiff City, he’s going off on one again, but I’m afraid that for much of today’s game, I felt exactly as I did so often watching City play during the season just ended.
A large part of modern defensive midfield play is receiving the ball from defenders playing out from the back and being able to retain possession while passing around the resultant press. To be fair to those doing the job for City, the passes out of a defence they get can leave a fair bit to be desired, but that doesn’t change the fact that, by and large, they’ve been poor at evading the opposition press. The Welsh defensive midfield had defenders playing the ball to them who are generally pretty good passers and yet for much of the time, could not progress the ball upfield to reach the talented attackers who were able to show they had the ability to hurt the Swiss when given the opportunity.
By contrast, our opponents found it too easy to pass around and through us for too much of the game, while when it came to defending, the central midfielder who was most responsible for breaking up attacks and tidying up awkward situations was Aaron Ramsey, who was supposed to be playing in a number ten role ahead of the two defensive midfielders.
So, who were these two ne’er dowels that I appear to be pinning the entire blame for our struggles on (to do so would be unfair by the way because we had issues in, for example, central defence, at full back and when it came to getting support to our striker as well) ?
The answer to that question is the two Joe’s, Allen and Morrell. Yes, that’s the Joe Allen who was brilliant in the Euros five years ago, so good in fact that he was selected in the team of the tournament. However, that was a Joe Allen at an age where it is generally reckoned a player is at his peak, one who was a regular in an established Premier League team and someone who had been a starter week in week out, for a Liverpool side that probably should have won the title a couple of years earlier.
What we’ve got now is a thirty one year old playing in a position that requires a very high level of fitness and mobility. Not just that, he’s a thirty one year old who suffered a very serious injury last year which would have caused him to miss the tournament if it had gone ahead when it should have done. Not only that, the established Premier League team he was playing for are now a fairly mediocre Championship outfit and Allen was missing from their side towards the end of last season due to another injury.
So, it would be foolish to expect Allen to reach the levels he did in France, while alongside him Joe Morrell, who I don’t think had ever let Wales down in the previous games he’d played for them, was coming off as season where he struggled for games in a Luton team which finished mid table in the Championship.
A midfield of Allen and Morrell could perhaps get the job done at the level Wales have been playing at in recent years (I.e. level two European countries in the Nations League and, generally speaking, teams at or below that level in Euro and World Cup qualifiers), but this is a step up from that and I don’t think there’ll be many teams with such modest resources in that position in the competition.
The very real problem facing Rob Page though is does he have better than Allen and Morrell in the squad? For myself, I’d opt for Ethan Ampadu instead of Morrell, but is he fully fit – he didn’t look it last week against Albania. Would Matt Smith or Dylan Levitt have fared better? It’s hard to imagine that they would, while Neco Williams was doing a decent job in the position for the short time he was on the pitch before his barmy sending off against France so he may be worthy of consideration. I’d also say that Will Vaulks would have made little difference to the Welsh performance today in my opinion, because the problems we had were very similar to the ones City often when Vaulks is playing in the position being discussed..
Anyway, on to the game. Rob Page went with what I thought was a pretty bold selection. He surprised me by starting with Keiffer Moore with the plan being that Ramsey would join Gareth Bale and Dan James as an attacking midfield three, all of which meant there was a back four with Joe Rodon and Chris Mepham flanked by Conor Roberts and Ben Davies.
Wales made a misleadingly positive start with Bale neatly finding Roberts who made a contribution in an attacking contribution for just about the only time in the game with a cross that couldn’t find a red shirt. James, bright throughout, then created the room for a cross which keeper Yann Sommer was able to collect quite comfortably. However, when James crossed for a second time, Moore’s powerful header from around the penalty spot brought a fine save from the keeper.
That was it though as far as Wales’ attacking went in the first half. Switzerland were always likely to have more of the ball, but not to the extent that we only had a City like twenty eight per cent possession at one time well into the opening half. Yet, for all of the thought that a Swiss goal was coming, Danny Ward, preferred to Wayne Hennessy, was only seriously tested once when Newcastle’s Fabian Schar flicked on a Xherdan Shaqiri corner only to be denied by a smart save.
Ben Davies came through a rocky twenty minutes or so to become his usual solid self and with Mepham and Rodon coping well with the series of crosses and corners into the box and Roberts vigilant on the right, the Welsh defence enjoyed a good first period. However, there was a taste of things to come just before the break when Breel Embolo began an inspired ten minute period by easily holding off Mepham to set up a good chance that Haris Seferovic blazed over from about ten yards out.
The first five minutes of the second half was all about Embolo as he first powered away from an uneasy pair of Welsh centrebacks to get in a shot which brought a brilliant save from Welsh man of the match Ward. The opening goal was only delayed a matter of seconds though as Embolo easily outjumped Roberts to head in the resultant corner.
Wales looked like going the same way as Turkey who had conceded three second half goals last night when the rampant Embolo laid on another chance for Kevin Mbabu who stabbed wide from a good position.
Perhaps the Swiss felt they had done enough now to have made sure of the points or maybe the conditions began to take an effect, but, without suggesting they had a goal in them, Wales managed to get themselves a toehold in the game and began to build the sort of attacks that had largely proved beyond them until then.
There was an improvement, but the equaliser when it came was a very pleasant surprise as Wales worked a short corner routine which enabled Morrell to make his best contribution of the ninety minutes when he clipped in a fine cross which Moore guided in with his bandaged head (he had been cut in a first half incident) having done well to find space for himself from about twelve yards out.
For ten minutes or so after that Wales were the better team for me and Bale was denied by a frantic block after being set up by sub David Brooks’ audacious flick (Brooks was introduced in place of an unhappy James in what seemed an odd change to me by Page) and Ramsey was not too far away from reaching the sub’s excellent cross shortly afterwards.
Unfortunately, just as I was allowing myself to contemplate a Welsh win for the first time, Switzerland awoke from what had been something of a twenty minute slumber to make the final few minutes very tense ones for Welsh fans. Sub Mario Gavranovic had the ball in the net only for the goal to be correctly disallowed by VAR for offside, Ward excelled again to tip over a header and then produced his best save of the game to deny Gavranovic – he was not to know that a flag had been raised for offside shortly before the substitute hit his shot.
The replacement of Ramsey by Ampadu deep into added time worked to the extent that it curtailed Swiss momentum and Wales soon had their point which, for me at least, was all the sweeter because it had come against the run of play.
Just to finish, it’s looking as if the very worrying collapse of Christian Erickson in Denmark’s game with Finland tonight which saw the match suspended for more than an hour after the Spurs man received CPR treatment was not as serious as first feared. I say this because it’s now been confirmed that Eriksen is awake and undergoing tests in hospital. The match resumed and ended in a great 1-0 win for the Finns, but the result was incidental under such circumstances..
