Usually when you have a bad day in football, you don’t do the basics right – and that was definitely the case with Wales on Saturday. They simply got steamrollered by a good Denmark side who outplayed them everywhere.
Wales started off brightly enough but then seemed to hit a wall. Yes, the Danes made that early tactical change, moving a man in front of the two centre-halves to deny Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey space to drop into, but Wales did nothing they are good at.
They couldn’t pass straight, they were too slow, the defending was off, the midfield got overrun, and the distance between the strikers and the back line was too big.
The service to Kieffer Moore was abysmal. If you play him, there has to be quality service from the sides. Nor did they put much over the top for Dan James or Bale and Ramsey to run on to.
Of course there was some bad luck too, with Connor Roberts going off injured in the first half, and the referee missing the foul on Moore in the lead-up to the second goal. Even if he had given a free kick, though, Wales would have still lost.
On the refereeing, I’d been talking about how good the officials have been at this Euros but the sending-off of Harry Wilson was embarrassing. It’s a yellow card all day long. Moore was unlucky to get booked in the first half too, so Wales ended up with a red card and three yellows when there wasn’t a bad challenge in the game.
Ultimately, though, there can be no complaints. Wales went as far as they could. Their job was to get out of the group and then see what happened so, in that sense, they have made country proud.
Overall, they showed stickability as while they played well against Turkey in their second group game, the rest of the time it didn’t quite click for them. At Euro 2016, everything clicked but not this time. For that reason alone, I think Robert Page has come out of this with credit. He got them out of the group stages under difficult conditions, stepping in for Ryan Giggs as caretaker manager and coping with all that travelling. He knew his best team and he picked it for the first two games and got the results needed. If the job were to come up in future, he hasn’t done himself any harm.
We have to look forward now to qualifying for the World Cup, which would be a bigger achievement than playing in the Euros. But there are questions – and not just around the manager. Will Gareth Bale carry on for the World Cup? Will Aaron Ramsey? I hope the answer is yes. I wouldn’t want to see those two – and Joe Allen as well for that matter – bow out on such a flat note as Saturday’s defeat.
More from i on Euro 2020
- England aren’t ‘rubbish’ and Southgate isn’t a ‘fraud’ – we just need a bit of patience
- What the Premier League could learn from Euro 2020’s controversy-free referees
- The football nomad who became a hero for his role in saving Eriksen’s life
- How Ronaldo’s Coca-Cola stunt could change the face of football sponsorship
- How to watch every Euro 2020 match on TV and online in the UK
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3xQ2LbA
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