When Craig Bellamy was unveiled as Wales’ new head coach in the summer of 2024 he had an overriding mission – not just his personal ambition, but one his new employer really wants and needs. Lead Wales to the 2026 World Cup finals.
Hope and expectation are now more aligned than ever. Merely hoping to qualify for major tournaments has been tempered somewhat because Wales have been part of three World Cup or Euros tournaments over the past nine years.
The standard has been raised markedly on and off the pitch. Rewind a decade and Wales had one of the world’s great players in Gareth Bale tormenting oppositions. The success came, so did the money, so did the investment and now a Wales squad with significant resources spread around the Premier League.
Yes there’s no Bale, but an argument or a good fan debate that the overall strength in depth of Wales’s squad is stronger now. Barring injuries and suspensions Wales could almost field a starting XI of Premier League players or players who play in a top flight league.
Wales can boost their hopes of a favourable play-off tie with a positive result against North Macedonia
And then there’s Bellamy. He’s following on from managers in Chris Coleman, Ryan Giggs and Rob Page who have overall been successful with Wales, there is a progression.
Bellamy is not a coach at the end of his career looking to stay within football, he’s young, ferociously keen and energetic and his background and experience as an assistant with Vincent Kompany is one that typifies the modern day complete coach. Knowledge, attention to detail, used to resources, data and a professional behaviour matching that of the top European club giants.
That now comes with expectation not just hope. Wales are set up on and off the pitch to be qualifying for major tournaments. The chief executive of the FAW in 2025 has a role that would have been unrecognisable a generation ago least not the injection of cash that came on the men’s football side from Euro 2016, Euro 2020 and World Cup 2022, a Champions League final host and now a Euro2028 host with the opening game. Investment throughout elite men’s and women’s football has flowed and the FAW and the public like it. Success is very nice.
The injured Ben Davies will be absent from the Wales side
So for it all to keep coming it’s down to 90 minutes of football. Seven matches completed so far in World Cup qualifying, one to go. To qualify automatically for the World Cup next year is possible, but virtually improbable given that would require Belgium to lose at home against Liechtenstein, but with 90 minutes remaining in qualifying it has to be a win.
Make the play-off path that best gives Wales the opportunity to head to North America. Get that home semi-final next March and in all likelihood it’ll be against a similar or lower ranked side. Wales will fancy that.
Wales were not at their best against Liechtenstein at the weekend, it was a hard watch. Total possession domination, but little creativity to prize apart the ‘parked bus’ in front of the opposition goal. They just about got the job done, but that begs the question how will Wales prize apart North Macedonia? They are a very decent side, well organised and their game plan is simple. A draw is enough so do not expect an open, end-to-end hum-dinger of a game. It has all the hallmarks of a tense, tight game with perhaps just a single goal separating either side.
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Harry Wilson says he dreamt about captaining Wales one day and says it is a real honour to have been given the arm band
Bellamy believes he has the personnel to fill the void left by the injury to Tottenham’s Ben Davies and suspensions for Ethan Ampadu and Jordan James. He’d rather have them and they’re absence is a big loss for Wales, but perhaps against North Macedonia and their ambitions for the evening he has options on this occasion.
Bellamy told me he expects North Macedonia to defend deep, be compact, but wary of a quick transition to the counter-attack. Don’t associate Wales possession dominance as a sign it’s all going well, North Macedonia won’t care if Wales have the ball, they’ll only care if they are stretching them and creating guilt edged chances.
For Wales to make what is on paper an evening that could be very, very nerve wrenching – an evening that is less stressful there is a simple solution: Score and score early. Heap the pressure on North Macedonia. Scoring early and controlling games has not necessarily been Wales forte during this qualifying campaign, but if ever there was the moment…
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Wales head coach Craig Bellamy criticised VAR following their 4-2 defeat in World Cup qualifying against Belgium
One other note of caution flagged by Bellamy ahead of the match. He’s really wary of the impact of VAR. We’ve all witnessed the various interpretations, but what he dislikes is how a VAR check alters the flow of play citing momentum loss when the game stops for several minutes. With so much at stake it would be a shame if VAR was the talking point after the game.