World Cup 2010 Qualifailure Campaign

World Cup 2010 Qual­i­fail­ure Cam­paign 

Wales 1 – 3 Russia

World Cup Qual­i­fier 2010, Group #4

Mil­len­nium Sta­dium, Wednes­day 9^th Sep­tem­ber 2009, 7.45pm

The build up to Wales’s most recent and irrel­e­vant World Cup qual­i­fy­ing group game was punc­tu­ated by the rather petu­lant and juve­nile civil war of crit­i­cism levied by leg­end Welsh play­ers towards the inep­ti­tude of the cur­rent national team.  The bit­ter and embar­rass­ing barbs were derided and counter derided in a blem­ish that a sen­si­tive Welsh foot­ball team can hardy tolerate. 

Fur­ther tor­ture arrived with the cal­lused news that Jason Koumas had announced his retire­ment from inter­na­tional foot­ball.  And While Koumas has a che­quered and unspec­tac­u­lar his­tory he is the clos­est thing that Wales have to flair or talent.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/8229460.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/league_of_wales/8244337.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/league_of_wales/8240621.stm  

The appoint­ment of John Toshack back in 2004 was met with a series of mixed emo­tions.  After the crescendo of Mark Hughes’s Euro Cham­pi­onship cam­paign the nation was divided, buoy­ant and wor­ried about the prog­no­sis of the Welsh national foot­ball team.  And while Wales had not qual­i­fied for Por­tu­gal there was at least hope and tan­gi­ble advance­ment.  Toshack was not a widely pop­u­lar choice, mostly because of his soiled flir­ta­tion with the national squad and even though ten years pre­vi­ous that one game aban­don­ment still stains a few mem­o­ries.  Any­way, regard­less of his rep­u­ta­tion the proud nation once again ral­lied around the new manager.

Since then and up to now the predica­ment for Toshack has been blighted and self-induced, often in equal mea­sure.  The cat­a­logue of player retirees is vast.  A cav­ity in qual­ity and in quan­tity that Wales just could not afford to lose.  Never have Wales been blessed with options and to have that kitty diluted unnec­es­sar­ily is noth­ing short of neg­li­gent.  Age and injury are unavoid­able rea­sons to retire but Toshack has forced plenty of play­ers to ter­mi­nate their asso­ci­a­tion with inter­na­tional foot­ball.  Many valu­able play­ers have expressed the desire not to play for the man­ager rather than not to play for their coun­try.  And while I don’t con­done player power under­min­ing a national team’s qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, I have to say that a man­ager of a coun­try like Wales must pli­cate and acqui­esce or some­time pan­der to the require­ments of a del­i­cate squad.  To resist against the tal­ent just makes the task even more dif­fi­cult, and to be the cat­a­lyst for the player depar­tures is foolish.

The lack of first team vari­ety or avail­able alter­na­tive has seen a mas­sive migra­tion from the youth ranks and from a very spe­cial u21 struc­ture.  The defect or legacy of Toshck’s man­age­r­ial atmos­phere has broad­ened the Welsh squad pro­vid­ing a greater depth across the player pool.  But the infant age and the lack of Pre­mier­ship expe­ri­ence leaves a some­times hol­low team sheet play­ing around an iso­lated for­ward account­able for guid­ing the team and win­ning the game.  An unachiev­able task.

Dur­ing this pre game press con­fer­ence Toshack was quick and accu­rate to ref­er­ence that Wales had been dealt a vixen in terms of a qual­i­fy­ing group.  Both Ger­many and Rus­sia are res­i­dent in the top ten of Fifa’s dubi­ous rank­ings.  Four and six, if you care.  And to have two such Euro­pean heavy­weights in one group is indeed harsh.  How­ever, what Toshack does not point out so quickly or so accu­rately is that Wales con­tinue to dwell in a sub­or­di­nate seed­ing pot because Wales con­tinue to bodge qual­i­fy­ing cam­paigns thus never rais­ing the coef­fi­cient enough not to have two or more bet­ter teams above.  Fourth again this time.  Three bet­ter teams again next time.

Toshack never com­mands the press con­fer­ence with the sharpest of cere­bral wis­dom and it seems that his stub­born and ulti­mately fruit­less approach to man­age­ment is again com­ing up dry.  There were many who weren’t that fanat­i­cal about his appoint­ment at the start and those dis­senters are can­vass­ing more sup­port for this per­spec­tive after each dis­ap­point­ment.  Toshack doesn’t have a strong man­age­r­ial hon­ours list despite a rep­u­ta­tion that I can’t quite under­stand, and it seems that his inep­ti­tude con­tin­ues to be unrav­elled on the field.

For a very long time now the Wales team under Toshack has con­stantly deployed a five man defen­sive unit.  The three bel­liger­ent cen­tral defend­ers flanked by two full­backs that years ago used to be called wing­backs.  I have mas­sive issue with this prim­i­tive sys­tem that Wales con­tinue to play irre­spec­tive of the per­son­nel avail­able.  Three cen­tral defend­ers is one too many, and instead of churn­ing out more work or more pro­tec­tion the chores just get shared around by dimin­ished respon­si­bil­ity.  Gab­bidon and Collins are not world class defender but they are decent enough.  Adding in sup­ple­men­tary play­ers just doesn’t give any more value to the cen­tre of defence and even takes account­abil­ity away from two good play­ers.  Gab­bidon and Collins should be the two first choice cen­tral defend­ers and other cen­tral defend­ers should remain replace­ments and options.

The other unfath­omable con­no­ta­tion of the wing­back mys­tery is that the width of the team is then pro­vided by the full­backs.  On a cou­ple of occa­sions the two Welsh full­backs had made good pen­e­tra­tion down the flanks exploit­ing the good the­ory of the sys­tem.  The demise then came as the deliv­er­ies into the box were devoid of qual­ity.  Wales had poor Cham­pi­onship qual­ity full­backs on dis­play and yet despite their tech­ni­cal infe­ri­or­ity they held the key to any poten­tial Welsh suc­cess.  The wide ball was never deliv­ered with the qual­ity required because the play­ers deliv­er­ing the ball were not of the qual­ity required.  Bale or Led­ley would have made a bet­ter left wing­back in this sys­tem; sadly nei­ther were play­ing left wing­back.  The sys­tem and the play­ing staff just didn’t fit.  An excel­lent piece of strat­egy or sub­terfuge was to swap Rick­etts and Gunter, this merely shifted incom­pe­tence to another part of the field pre­vi­ously occu­pied by incom­pe­tence.  And lead to more Russ­ian goals against. 

The mid­field four seemed to lack any kind of direc­tion.  All four were hon­est in their endeav­ours but the shape of the mid­field was inco­her­ent.  That left Bel­lamy a lit­tle secluded, and despite his marathon of energy Bel­lamy was betrayed by the tac­tics.  Bellamy’s for­ward iso­la­tion smarts of a pend­ing retire­ment; Man­ches­ter City must seem more of a valid prospect for him now, surely.

The indi­vid­ual per­for­mances were not at all bad, whereas the col­lec­tive out­come con­tin­ues to be intol­er­a­ble.  The Welsh indus­try to keep fun­nelling back behind the ball was impec­ca­ble.  Each and every Welsh player had great aspi­ra­tion to assist with the team cause.  The miss­ing detail was that the pri­or­ity for the Welsh play­ers was to get back and adhere to the team shape but in doing so they neglected to pri­ori­tise the ball.  On numer­ous occa­sions the Welsh team were in syn­chro­nised for­ma­tion and yet the first defender pres­sure on the ball was absent.  It’s a for­got­ten sen­ti­ment in con­tem­po­rary foot­ball that team defend­ing is oddly eclips­ing the ubiq­ui­tous neces­sity to pres­sure the ball.  A mav­er­ick Arshavin picked passes through the entire infantry of a Welsh defence, and under no duress he could have done so blindfold.

On the rare occa­sion where the assem­bled masses of the Welsh defence did turn over pos­ses­sion it was inevitable that a coun­ter­at­tack could not be staged due to such a deep lying con­cen­tra­tion of almost every player.  With­out the coun­ter­at­tack option avail­able ahead of the play the flawed choice was just a generic long ball through the chan­nels arbi­trar­ily guided towards the pace of Bel­lamy.  This did not work.  A poor qual­ity set piece cor­ner was the only moment of suc­cess and even that was more than fortunate. 

As men­tioned I don’t think that the indi­vid­ual play­ers per­formed that poorly, there was much to be pleased with.  Brian Stock looked very com­fort­able on debut, it’s nice to see Gab­bidon and Collins play­ing, Ram­sey got some more field time, Hennessey…etc.  The Wales team just lack that guid­ance and they lack that direc­tion.  The tac­tics were abhor­rent this evening, as they reg­u­larly are, and the net result reads the same as last time and the time before and the time before that. 

Wales will again almost cer­tainly be stranded in a mid table medi­oc­rity after this result and yet again some dis­il­lu­sioned Pre­mier­ship star will surely choose to pro­long his Pre­mier­ship con­tract ahead of his national com­pul­sion.  Wales don’t have the priv­i­lege to be rad­i­cal with its deci­sions but things just aren’t right.  And I know what my pref­er­ence would be for change.

 From The Writ­ings Of Jonny Carter

www.JonnyCarter.com