After the Turkey game on Friday, Craig Bellamy, in essence, said in one of his post match interviews that this was as bad as it would get for his team. I don’t think that he meant that literally Wales would play better in every game under his management after they played as well as they had done in ages in his first, it was more that his side would improve gradually given time and I think he could well be right.
However, if he did really mean that Wales would never play as “badly” as they did in his first game as Wales manager, then I’m afraid Bellamy was proved wrong in his second fixture in his new role. Wales never hit the heights that they did three days ago as they gave the early group leaders (Turkey beat Iceland 3-1 tonight) a huge fright, but in winning 2-1 in Montenegro they did what they hadn’t done in some time – go to a middling ranked team (as opposed to a minnow) and win in a competitive match.
Results like Yugoslavia 4 Wales 4, Turkey 6 Wales 4 and Serbia 6 Wales 1 have established a tradition of a bonkers match being played about once a decade in the south east corner of Europe over the past forty years or so and, although this did not follow the same high scoring pattern, the description “bonkers’ could still be applied to it I reckon.
For a start, torrential rain throughout greatly affected the pitch and while things never got truly farcical, there was some standing water and players on both sides found it very hard to keep their feet. There was also a comedy referee who showed yellow cards to two Montenegrins and three Welshmen for offences which bore no relation to the cases of GBH he allowed the home team to commit in the first half in particular – a foul count of 17 to 10 in Montenegro’s favour was not reflected at all in terms of cautions delivered and the truth was that all of the really bad fouls on the night were committed by the home team.
There was a mad first three minutes as Wales, without a goal in their previous four matches and showing five changes from Friday, scored twice.
Have Wales scored a quicker goal than the one Kieffer Moore got in just thirty seven seconds tonight? They probably have done, but it happened before my time supporting them because, off the top of my head, I can’t recall a quicker one.*
There was an element of luck to it as well as Harry Wilson claimed an unlikely assist as he drove into the penalty area, tried to get a shot away, only for a defender to attempt a clearance that rebounded off the Fulham man straight into the path of Moore who finished well with a shot in off the post from around the penalty spot.
There was time for Ethan Ampadu to get the game’s first yellow card for a professional foul on the halfway line before Wilson struck straight afterwards with a shot that owed nothing to luck as he received a pass from Neco Williams and drove high into the top corner of the net from twenty five yards.
If there’s a good thing to conceding goals so early, then it’s the realisation that you’ve got plenty of time to put things right and so it was that Montenegro began on the long route to getting a positive result from such a horror start and I have to concede that, by the end of the ninety minutes, they’d done enough to earn a draw or even a win.
In fact, Montenegro could have been drawing by the quarter of an hour mark as an unmarked Nikola Krstovic shot a yard wide with debutante goalkeeper Karl Darlow helpless, then Montenegro’s greatest player, Stevan Jovotic hit the crossbar from the halfway line with Darlow stood some twenty five yards out from goal. The reason Darlow was where he was was that he’d come outside the area to provide the extra outfield player as Wales looked to build from the back, but a shoddy pass from Ampadu, who started poorly, but grew into a good game, meant the ball stood up beautifully for the ex Manchester City man to hit and I’d say it was a chance a player of his ability would expect to take about five times out of ten,
Darlow’s best moments of his debut came within a couple of seconds of each other as he pulled off a double save which, first, prevented an own goal by Connor Roberts and then denied Jovotic, but he still needed help from Ben Davies as the captain just about managed to keep Driton Camaj’s follow up.
While all of this was going on, Wales continued to build up smoothly and looked quite dangerous on plenty of occasions, but there was only one moment of real alarm for the home team when some lovely play by Wilson sent Williams racing in on goal, only for a defender to get across and cut out the danger before the Forest man could shoot.
After the break, Brennan Johnson, on as a sub for the injured Connor Roberts, saw his fierce drive pushed away by keeper Mijatovic and by far Wales’ best move of the second period saw Ampadu set Davies free and his low cross was met by a lunging Moore who managed to send the ball over from about four yards out. In dry conditions, it would have been a shocking miss, but, on such a wet pitch, it fell into the more difficult because of the weather category.
Wales never really threatened after that and it became a case of hanging on for the win in the last twenty minutes as Vladimir Jovovic hit the post from twenty yards, Darlow tipped a Jovotic header around the post and was eventually beaten when an innocuous looking ball over the top of a very square looking Welsh defence enabled Kristovik to get clear down their left and his low cross was turned in from close range by Camaj.
Monetenego were never to come go close again though and Wales held on for a win which means that this first international break of 24/25 has to be viewed as a success for the new manager and his players.
Wales Under 18s played their latest game in the six team round robin tournament they are competing in and were beaten 2-1 by Turkey, Ronan Kpakio, Jac Thomas and Jake Davies all played with the last named getting the Welsh goal.
*I’m grateful to blog reader Clive Harry who proved me wrong by confirming that we have scored a quicker goal in the past sixty odd years in which I’ve been supporting Wales. In March 2003, we played Azerbijan at what is now called the Millennium Stadium in. a qualifier for the 2004 Euros and our first goal in a 4-0 win has been timed at around 15 seconds. What I can’t confirm is the identity of the scorer as I’ve seen it variously reported as a Craig Bellamy goal, a Simon Davies goal and an own goal with the last named seeming to be the most popular choice.
Morning all. The earliest ever Welsh goal has ironically been credited to Craig Bellamy who scored in around 13 seconds against Azerbaijan in March 2003.
Thanks Clive, I can confirm that you’re right – Wales won the game 4-0. I can remember the match, but not the goal in question – having done a bit of research on it, I’ve seen it variously credited as an own goal, a goal by Craig Bellamy and a goal by Simon Davies!
I’ll put a footnote to the blog piece clarifying that Moore’s goal wasn’t the quickest in Welsh history.