Wales ended their four match international programme with a whimper I’m afraid as they went down to a tired looking 1-0 home loss to Denmark. The goal may have come from a penalty caused by a costly blunder by goalkeeper Danny Ward, but I thought, after an opening half an hour in which we looked the better team, we were second best to the Danes again – it may not have been as one sided as it was a week ago in Copenhagen, but we didn’t deserve anything tonight.
As I was watching Wales huffing and puffing to little effect in the second half, I found myself being critical of Craig Bellamy’s selections and substitutions because he seemed powerless to influence proceedings when we were chasing the game.
However, this three week, four game {all competitive and with consequences as far as things like seedings in terms of future tournaments is concerned) period is a first for all concerned. True, it has parallels as far as the rate at which matches come along in major tournaments, but, like many of the other managers of teams playing their four games in about a week and a half, Craig Bellamy has no previous experience of it in international football either as manager or player.
Before the game I thought fatigue may be a factor, but not to the extent it looked like it was once the initial enthusiasm caused by the Norway win faded. Therefore, if I was surprised by how flat it became from about the thirty minute mark onwards, then maybe it was to Bellamy and his coaching staff as well, even though I daresay they would have been receiving all sorts of data back from the conditioning staff countries employ these days.
Maybe, it was the scientific analysts who told Bellamy that he’d be best off not using Dan James at all tonight because many people’s Man of the Match against Norway began on the bench and stayed there for the full ninety plus minutes. Similarly, you would have thought Kieffer Moore would have been the replacement for Lewis Koumas when he came off on fifty six minutes, but, instead it was Mark Harris, with Kieffer only being introduced in the 83rd minute.
From a City point of view, Joel Colwill got about twenty minutes when he came on for Liam Cullen, but achieved little – although I would say it was hard for any sub to make an impact by that stage because the Welsh team had gone in terms of energy and belief it seemed to me.
It’s a shame that Cian Ashford ends this international break as he began it with no full caps for his country. Although it galls me to some extent to see Wes Burns who is 32 next month and playing for a League One club introduced when you remember that playing in the third tier was a reason given by Bellamy for ignoring Rubin Colwill, again, last season, I wasn’t too surprised to see Cian miss out tonight, but maybe if he or, say, Cameron Congreve had been given twenty minutes or so earlier in the four matches, that may have enabled Dan James to have got some game time tonight?
Either way, I hope those conditioning experts spend the coming weeks trying to put together a set of recommendations as to how a smaller nation like ourselves can best handle these longer international breaks if they’re going to become a regular feature.
Before leaving the subject of the physical effects of the longer international programmes, I should say that the Welsh Man of the Match by miles, Ethan Ampadu, who I believe played every minute of the four games, was superb tonight, so maybe the previous six paragraphs or so are crap!
There’s little to say about the match really as very little happened and what goalmouth action there was seemed to occur exclusively in our penalty area. The BBC’s stats say that we only had one on target goal attempt and I can only think it the time when a Sorba Thomas cross hit Koumas on the shoulder and the ball bounced on through to the Danish keeper – as there is nothing else I can think of which satisfies the attempts on goal criteria.
Up the other end, Danny Ward made two fine saves to deny Rasmus Hojlund and an even better one to turn Gustav Isaksen’s header on to an upright. However, Ward isn’t the most convincing with the ball at his feet and when he presented the ball straight to Isaksen, he dived towards the Danish player in an attempt to rectify his error and instead made what was fairly soft contact with the player who went down claiming a penalty which the Bosnian ref duly gave.
It was understandable that Ward and a few others chose to dispute the decision, but I could also understand why it was made as it just looked like a penalty to me.
Hojlund beat Ward very comfortably from the spot and that was it really as Wales barely looked like scoring after that – or before it actually.
In the Cymru Premier, Cambrian surely created a record or two by conceding nine on their travels for a second successive game! This time it was 9-0 against a TNS side that already looks like running away with the title. Meanwhile in Division One (East) of the Highadmit South Wales Alliance, Treorchy Boys and Girls Clubs’ travails at the bottom of the table continued with a 3-0 home defeat by Cwrt Rawlin FC.
