Just for a few seconds in the first half, the ghost of failed campaigns 1959 to 2015 reared its head, but it was soon put in its place by a Wales team that handled the sort of occasion which used to have nerves shredded on and off the pitch with aplomb and no little style. Wales needed to win and they duly did it by beating Hungary 2-0 and they weren’t flattered in the slightest by their victory.
In fact, it could be said that this victory over a side that was second in the table when the game started and went into it knowing that they would be going through themselves with a win, was as comfortable as the one Wales had gained in Azerbaijan on Saturday.
Three days ago, the fact that Azerbaijan were the group’s whipping boys with nothing whatsoever to play for could have been out forward as much as any Welsh quality as a reason why the game panned out like it did. Tonight, however Wales were a lot better than a team who must surely have thought they had one foot in the finals when they beat us 1-0 in Budapest back in June.
This qualification is so different from one in 2016 for so many reasons. With that one, there seemed something almost preordained about it from the moment Gareth Bale scored from a twice taken free kick with just minutes left to secure a scruffy, scrappy win in Andorra in our first game. It took just over a year to secure the qualification, but it felt for so much of that time, that we weren’t going to slip up and once Gareth Bale’s goal had beaten Belgium on a never to be forgotten night at the Cardiff City Stadium nothing could stop us.
The main reason for me why qualification for Euro 2020 feels completely different is that this time it has crept up on us and it’s only been in the month since we drew in Slovakia and then held Croatia in Cardiff that the feeling we could do it began to take hold.
In fact, speaking for myself, I wasn’t expecting us to go through even after the October fixtures because, as the injuries mounted to go with the fact that Joe Allen wouldn’t be available for Azerbaijan because of suspension, I though the most likely outcome in Baku would be a draw which would virtually extinguish our hopes.
So, for me, it was only when Croatia beat Slovakia a few hours after our win over Azerbaijan that I found myself thinking we can do this! Therefore, there was something like 400 days with a hope that we could, finally, end that qualification drought in 2016 and about seventy hours when I fancied us to make it to Euro 2020!
The only other time I found myself contemplating a top two finish was in the two months or so following our win over Slovakia in the first game of the group before we slipped to a somewhat unlucky loss by Croatia in the summer.
The Hungary defeat a few days later really piled the pressure on Ryan Giggs as he tried to win over a sceptical fanbase. I was one of those sceptics, but I have to concede that there was something impressive about the way Giggs handled the situation leading into tonight’s match as I feel his experiences with Manchester United helped him portray a calm and confident mood over these last few days which cannot have done any harm at all to his team’s chances.
As there always is with Giggs, there were selections which looked questionable. It was certainly a brave decision to pick Ethan Ampadu as the one to stand down to accommodate Joe Allen’s return and Harry Wilson would surely have felt aggrieved to have to step aside to allow Aaron Ramsey to return to the starting line up.
There was much talk of Ramsey being a big game player in the hours leading up to the match, but, in terms of his country at least, it had been sometime since the former City man had been really influential in a Welsh shirt – I’d say that you may have to go all the way back to quarter final win over Belgium in Lille nearly three and a half years ago.
Until his fine goal which earned what turned out to be a crucial point against Croatia last month, the same sort of thing could be said about Gareth Bale – although it was becoming pretty rare for the two big stars of the Welsh game to appear in the same qualifying game, the truth was they didn’t do a great deal when they did.
Tonight though, Bale and, particularly, an inspired Ramsey came up trumps after what I wouldn’t say was a nervous first fifteen minutes by Wales, mote an unconvincing quarter of an hour.
Wales had done little in attack when Bale was given a bit of space on the right after Allen and Connor Roberts had combined and he made the Hungarians pay with a beautiful cross which was met by a typical Ramsey run from the man himself and the resultant header sent the crowd into raptures.
Thinking back, there was a good header in Israel which set Wales on their way to their 3-0, but I can’t recall too many headed Ramsey goals down the years which seems strange given the text book nature of both of those finishes.
If Keifer Moore could have matched Ramsey’s technique, rather than head just wide, when he met another lovely Bale cross a few minutes later, then Wales could have been virtually out of sight with not a half an hour played. However, the man who is, arguably, most responsible for the transformation we have seen in second half of the qualification campaign grew into the game after a first half that was a bit of a struggle for him and by the end his marker Martin Skrtel (or somebody doing a very convincing impression of him at least!) was reduced to ludicrous assaults on the Welsh attack leader that, laughably, were not considered worth a yellow card from the Romanian referee.
Without ever quite showing the control seen in Baku. Wales had not had too much trouble controlling the Hungarians until those few seconds when things threatened to go wrong for them . The two fine saves Wayne Hennessey produced to deny the visitors an equaliser will probably be forgotten long long before Ramsey’s goals are, but, again, perhaps more than any other, that incident helped instil a feeling that Wales would prevail.
1-0 ahead, and deservedly so, it was still all a little bit nervy at the break, but all of that changed just two minutes into the second period when Moore bundled a Ben Davies free kick to Ramsey, stood close to being, but not quite, offside, who had found space for himself in a crowded penalty area. From a position close to where he scored in another 2-0 win where qualification was celebrated against Andorra four years ago, the man Wales had missed so much during 2019 took a touch and then calmly lifted the ball over keeper Gulasci and into the net.
Although it may not have felt like it at the time, hindsight tells me that Hungary were gone from that moment and, for a while afterwards, Wales played with a panache you could never have expected in what was supposed to be a fraught occasion. Bale, with a free kick, an increasingly influential Dan James and Ramsey again all came very close to getting a third goal, but it didn’t really matter because the crucial work had been done and all that was needed in the last quarter of the match was for Wales to hold their composure and discipline in an increasingly joyous atmosphere.
So, the senior side have booked their place in the Finals of a European international competition and they might yet be joined by our Under 19s and Under 17s who have both qualified for the Elite Round of their age group Championships.
The Under 17s made it last month by finishing second in their qualification group , but the Under 19s did so by winning theirs as they beat Kosovo 2-0 today at Rodney Parade to finish two points above second placed Russia who thumped Poland 4-0.
City’s Harry Pinchard joined Dan Griffiths and Sam Bowen in the side (Keenan Patten was suspended after bookings in both of Wales previous games) and opened the scoring just before half time and when he was replaced by Isaak Davies near the end, the sub almost made it two City goalscorers in the game as drew a fine save from the visiting keeper who has been unlucky when he saved a Neco Williams penalty about a quarter of an hour earlier only for the ball to rebound back to the Liverpool full back who duly tapped in to make it 2-0.
Williams, who has already played for Liverpool’s first team and with another player from that club in the defence and another centreback from Everton in the side, there are players from very big clubs in this squad, but the stand out player for me was City’s Sam Bowen who controlled matters in the middle of the park throughout.
It was great to see Bowen, as a representative of a club that is held up of one last bastions of route one, direct football, looked so assured as the anchor man in a midfield that was part of a team that continuously looked to play out from the back and turned down opportunities to “lump” free kicks into the box in favour of a more thoughtful and, ultimately more successful approach.
Virtually everything Wales did went through Bowen was assured and composed throughout and any mistakes he made late on were as much down to over confidence as lack of ability at this level.
Over the past week, both Sam Bowen and Keenan Patten have shown a promise at a good level which suggests they could be a bit more than the “bread and butter” midfielders favoured by our previous manager – maybe they won’t be able to push on and make it into the first team, but Bowen, who is still with City, rather being out on loan like Pattern is, has shown that he deserves a lot better than being virtually by the Under 23 side like he has been for of this season.
A fine day for Welsh football also included a victory for the Under 21 team, who have had some disappointing results since beginning their campaign with a very impressive 1-0 win over Belgium, edged out Bosnia -Herzegovina at Wrexham thanks a single goal by Swansea’s Liam Cullen – George Ratcliffe, the only City player involved, made a superb second half save to keep the game goalless shortly before Cullen’s fine strike in the seventieth minute.
