Bellamy: Chapter One - work in progress has already restored hope
Image: Lewis Mitchell Photography
Megan Feringa
The boy with his shirt off in the 79th minute, the red garment swirling in a -2 degree wind chill. This was the sign. A sign of what? Of safety — despite the zealous winter cold ripping at the boy’s bare and actively reddening chest. Despite the still eight and some minutes left to play and another necessary result with plenty of time to sour. Despite the mind numbing list of permutations now buried deep in some useless fold of everyone’s collective brain. This bare chested shirt wheeling was a sign that none of that mattered. Not in a space where, finally, it was safe to hope again.
Welsh football fans know the perils of hope. It is the feeling of simultaneously being burned alive and engulfed in an invincible white heat. Hope is shoving a fork into a toaster and plugging it in. Standing in a lightning storm on top of a mountain wearing a suit of tin foil and lithium batteries. Dropping an anvil on your bare foot. It is daft. It is self-sabotaging. And in those rarified moments when it is permitted and satisfied, it is gorgeous.
Six games and one Nations League promotion into Wales’ Craig Bellamy era and this is arguably its greatest achievement. There are honourable mentions: Bellamy’s six-game unbeaten start is the best in Wales’s managerial history. The 4-1 victory against Iceland on Tuesday night represented Wales’ first comeback victory since September 2021, when Gareth Bale’s hat-trick salvaged a 3-2 victory away to Belarus. Automatic promotion to League A now effectively guarantees Wales a World Cup playoff spot.
But a team which only five months ago drew goalless with 203rd-ranked Gibraltar – a draw that felt more like the final stroke of a man attempting to swim upstream against a tidal wave while blindfolded – and this is what Wales have: a team with no real designated superstar or tabloid sex appeal but one with cohesion, an identity, a sense of rhythm and texture and depth and fun.
That Wales reached this place so swiftly into Bellamy’s tenure speaks to many things. First, Bellamy’s tactical nous. In six matches, Bellamy has utilised six different starting XIs rotating between 20 different players, many of which seemed dizzyingly ludicrous at first glance, only to appear glaringly obvious in their aftermath.
An aspect of this experimentation was forced: Bellamy was deprived of midfielders Ethan Ampadu and Aaron Ramsey after his first camp. Not until November was Leeds winger Dan James available. Injury and illness consigned Bournemouth midfielder David Brooks to the bench.
But Bellamy was able to adapt to the challenges and execute with a squad lacking in star quality. That he could do so while embedding a front-footed, possession-based style at odds with that of his predecessor Robert Page spoke to the trust he placed in his players to step up and the reciprocal buy-in from players for him to instruct them correctly on how to do so.
Teething issues remain. Only one player in the squad (Brennan Johnson) starts regularly in the Premier League, while the team’s other regular starters ply their trade in the Championship, League One or in Ligue 1. That 34-year-0ld Swansea midfielder Joe Allen needed to un-retire for this campaign feels special for the nostalgic yet concerning for the future. The goalkeeper debate rages between two players (31-year-old Danny Ward and 34-year-old Karl Darlow) who have not played a single minute of league football between them since 29 December 2023 (Darlow, 1-0 defeat to West Brom).
The statistics are also worth considering. According to FootyStats, Wales averaged an xG of just 1.23 per game in the Nations League (the 28th best in the competition) and an xGA of 1.30. The latter speaks to Wales’ risky style of play, something Bellamy will need to be aware of against more clinical and higher quality opponents (that Wales conceded an average of 0.67 across the competition spoke partly to the defensive efforts of Joe Rodon, Ben Cabango, Ben Davies and others but also their opponents’ profligacy).
Yet, Wales – with a squad that, realistically, is far from the nation’s best on an individual level – overachieved on their campaign xG by +0.27. This speaks to Bellamy as a coach as opposed to manager, his ability to both improve individuals to hone a greater sum of parts. Harry Wilson, who cannot get a sniff at Fulham, is was Wales’ top goalscorer with four goals, drawing level with former Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs for international goals (12); Johnson grabbed two goals and an assist in this campaign, his largest haul in a campaign since the Nations League A campaign in the summer of 2022; Bolton Wanderers midfielder Josh Sheehan stepped into the hole Ampadu vacated with admirable aplomb; Cullen’s two goals and two assists against Iceland represented his first goal involvements in just his fourth competitive appearance for Wales.
It is worth bearing in mind who Wales have faced – Iceland are ranked 70th in FIFA rankings, Montenegro 75th. But the mission heading into this Nations League campaign was to embed a cogent identity into a team that had, for roughly three years prior, stared into a mirror and saw a perpetual man-bunned individual staring back. To accomplish the feat while securing automatic promotion is an achievement that should not be sniffed at.
Nor should the vibe shift. In June, Welsh football lurched on the edge of an emotional gutter. Spittle-flecked rage was interspersed by the urge to dig a grave and leap into it for another 58 major-tournament-less years. Then came Bellamy, with his Mill Lane couture and his obsession with finding and creating angles. Angles in a literal sense – on the pitch, in the press, in possession. And a metaphorical sense: Wales as something interesting and bold, a multi-dimensional funhouse, despite the parts being mostly the same as before, just angled differently.