The cruellest way to lose?

The player who volunteers to take the fifth penalty for their team in a shoot out (I hope and trust players aren’t just told by the manager/coach who’ll be taking them and in what order) can be blessed or cursed.

Sometimes earlier misses lead to the fifth penalty becoming redundant and the person concerned is spared taking theirs, but, more often, they end up having to take one and the very fact that they have to means that the pressure is at its highest – especially if you’re in the team taking the penalties second.

Dan James had the bottle to take the fifth spot kick for Wales in their Euro Finals shoot out against Poland last night. However, with his team 5-4 down in the mini competition to decide a match that had ended in a draw after 120 minutes in reality, the Leeds winger, who had ended up having to play as a kind of makeshift right back after an injury had forced Connor Roberts off in the eighty fourth minute, did not hit his shot well enough and it turned into one of those penalties that the keeper, in this case ex Arsenal man Wojciech Szczesny, was always going to save if he chose the right way to dive.

In truth, that applies to many penalties. I was surprised to see captain Ben Davies taking the first penalty and great credit to him for finding the net, but it would have been an easy save for Szczesny if he’d made the right choice and the same applied to third one by Harry Wilson. Keiffer Moore’s penalty, Wales’ second one, was unsaveable as he opted for the well struck shot aimed high that had served him well when he was playing for City, but this time he needed luck as the ball hit the underside of the crossbar and bounced down over the line. Neco Williams taking penalty number four was something of a surprise for me, but it turned out to to be the best one Wales took and would probably have found the net even if the keeper had dived the right way.

The odds had to favour the Poles once it became a competition which was, in essence, between the two goalkeepers. Szczesny, who played around one hundred and eighty times for Arsenal, has played nearly two hundred and fifty times for Serie A giants Juventus since signing for them in 2017. On the other hand, Ward is Championship team Leicester City’s fourth choice goalkeeper this season and has not played a first team game for them in 23/24 – incredibly, not one of the three goalkeepers in the Wales squad has played a league game for their club this season!

In some respects then, it was not a competition between equals – Ward got quite close to a couple of the Polish penalties and Robert Lewandowski’s opening effort definitely fell into the saveable if the keeper went the right way category, but it wasn’t just the natural pessimism which kicks in with me at least on such occasions which had me thinking the shoot out was destined to be won by the Poles.

Robert Page was a good, but unspectacular, defender for his country and he was able to make a very decent club career for himself which saw him perform well at a lower end Premier League/top end Championship level. However, a managerial career which consisted of spells at lower league Northampton and Port Vale that could not be called successes and some time in charge of the Welsh under 21 team means that he is doomed to being forever under close scrutiny by some who simply don’t think he is up to the job and it seems to me that there is an element of when he does well it’s ignored and when he does badly, or even adequately, the pressure is almost instantly ratcheted up on him.

I still find myself unable to come to a firm decision either way on Page as Wales manager. I feel he did very well in the Nations League when he first took over from Ryan Giggs and getting to the 2020 Euros where we under performed by 2016 standards, but I’d say did about as well as that squad could was not a disaster by any means. On the other hand, we weren’t really convincing in our 2022 World Cup qualifying group, got lucky against Ukraine in the Paly Off Final and the Nations League campaign as an A ranked country saw a predictable relegation.

So, Wales headed into the 2022 World Cup not in a good place, but the very fact they were in the latter stages of the competition after a sixty four year absence meant Page was considered worthy of a four year contract extension.

Wales’ Euro 2024 qualifying campaign could be called patchy, some poor early performances and results had Page under the most pressure since he took over in my opinion. However, a really good win over Croatia put the team’s destiny in their own hands with two games to go only for another poor showing against Armenia and a draw against group winners Turkey in a match we could well have won left us third and in the Play Offs.

In simple terms, finishing third when you were seeded second must be seen as an under achievement, but a seven match unbeaten run stretching back to September left Page entitled to believe things were improving. The way a team with only Davies a survivor from the successful 2016 side dismantled a Finnish outfit that was thought to be our equals by many suggested Page was bringing through another good side which could make qualifying for major tournaments a habit.

When it came to last night’s match though, Page was coming under criticism right from the time the team was announced and it continued throughout the game, then into the small hours after it.

Once again, I find myself rather stuck in the middle when it comes o our manager. For example, it’s claimed that by bringing in Moore for David Brooks, we sacrificed much of the attacking pace and flair which troubled the Finns so much. Indeed, there were signs that the Polish defence was not the quickest and that Brennan Johnson, who often doesn’t look the same player when representing his country that he does for his club, was on his game, but we never really got ourselves into positions where we could truly exploit these advantages.

Of course, those who didn’t want Moore in the starting line up will argue that it was his presence and the changes in approach that demands allied to it which led to Wilson, Brooks, Johnson etc not being seen to best effect, but it’s a fact that, in a game of very few chances, what ones we did get were through high balls aimed into the Polish penalty area.

Notably, Moore’s presence led to Davies heading just over early on, then the target man nodded on a Roberts long throw to the head of the captain who found the net in time added on at the end of the first half only for the goal to be ruled out because of a close, but correct, offside decision.

In the opening minutes of the second half, Moore’s header from a ball in by Wilson looked to be looping into the corner over Szczesny, but the keeper got back to make a fine save at the expense of a corner. The frustration was that the Polish defence looked susceptible to the high ball as well as pace, but Wales were unable to cash in on this.

So, on balance, I would not say that it can be claimed for sure that it was Page’s selection of the starting line up which cost us, but there were a couple of things I found hard to explain. First, it just seems plain wrong that one hundred and twenty minutes of high intensity football played under a great deal of mental pressure saw the Wales manager only making three substitutions.

Brooks absence from the starting line up may be explained by him, apparently, having a sickness which would lead to what seemed like a very puzzling decision to replace him with Nathan Broadhead just eighteen minutes after he’d come on. So, there is every chance that the three changes Page made would only have been two if Brooks had been fully fit, but, as it was, he brought James on for Johnson (predictable, but I would have kept Johnson on) and, in fact, you would have thought Roberts would not have been taken off but for his injury, so it may well be that two of the three substitutions were forced on Page.

Although Aaron Ramsey’s penalty taking in his early years in the game often lead to me having kittens, I have to concede that it has improved down the years and so I watched the dying minutes of extra time waiting for Rambo to be introduced to take part in the shoot out. Wales were hanging on by this stage a little mind as Chris Mepham was harshly shown a second yellow card by Italian referee Daniele Orsato who I thought had a pretty good game overall.

Even at this late stage of his career, it should have been a cert that if Ramsey was considered fit enough for a place on the bench, he should have played some part in a game which was, first, crying out for more creativity in the Welsh midfield and, second, in need of penalty takes with a record of succeeding in very high pressure situations. However, Ramsey stayed on the bench throughout which begged the question why was he there in the first place and you also had to wonder whether Page thought the other six outfield players he didn’t use were up to the task?

Therefore, I think Page has questions to answer after last night, but not ones that could see him losing his job – if he was able to come through Wales 2 Armenia 4 (a result which cost us dearly in the qualifying group, the no show in the draw over there didn’t help either) without being sacked, I don’t think a defeat by, arguably, the cruellest of methods you can lose a football match is going to see him given his cards now.

Were Wales unlucky then? Well, I thought the Poles were the more controlled team in their build up play and they were better at getting themselves into good shooting and crossing positions from open play, but that control did not extend to the final ball or their shooting. This can be shown by the fact that Danny Ward, who could not be anywhere near fully match fit, didn’t not have a single shot or header to save in the whole two hours before the fateful shoot out, so, as the team that had what on target goal attempts there were, yes, Wales can feel hard done by.

Nevertheless, this feels more like a big opportunity missed compared to a couple of famous occasions in the past which left us haunted by penalties – the infamous Joe Jordan handball game in 1977 and the Paul Bodin miss against Romania in 1993. My memory from both of those matches tells me that no matter what the controversy or the bad luck involved when it came to penalties bouncing out off the crossbar, the outcome on the night was right because the better team won in each case.

No, this has more of the feel of 1985 and the night Jock Stein died featuring another dubious penalty given to the Scots – a game between two well matched teams that could really have gone either way with Wales left cursing their bad luck.

There a Welsh qualification for the Euros yesterday at age group level though as the Under 17s made it through to a second consecutive tournament after finishing second in their mini group held over the past week or so. There was not as much City representation in this team compared to last year’s, but Jac Thomas and Ronan Kpakio were regular full back selections and the latter was a scorer in the 2-1 defeat by group winners Sweden, but 2-1 victories either side of that against hosts Romania and Bulgaria were enough to take us through as one of he best second place finishers.

The under 19s, featuring many of the City players in last year’s under 17 squad, have been involved in a couple of friendlies with Belgium in recent days – the first one was lost 1-0, but a goal by ex Cardiff player Garielle Biancheri gave Wales a deserved win by the same score in the second one.

Finally, the under 21s went clear at the top of their qualification group against rivals who all have games in hand on them as they came back from conceding first to beat Lithuania 2-1 at Rodney Parade on Friday. Rubin Colwill and Tom Davies were in the starting line up and the former equalised with a simple finish shortly after the visitors had taken an early lead. The winner came with about a quarter of an hour left when Colwill went past four opponents to give Liverpool’s Lewis Koumas a chance which he finished with aplomb from the edge of the penalty area.

I wondered whether Colwill’s man of the match contribution would be enough to get him a place on the bench for the senior side four days later, but, no, he was again one of the three senior squad members who didn’t make it into the final twenty three – it’s my Cardiff bias coming through of course, but it did strike me that an on form Colwill might offer more in what was a must win game than one or two other midfield players who were unused subs last night.