Coleman’s men aiming to erase nightmare in Novi Sad
WHEN Wales land at Belgrade airport today, it will be inescapable.
As they step off the plane jetting in from Cardiff late this afternoon, it may be the smallest of signs, the most innocuous of things that sparks a chain reaction of memories, ones that most wanted to bury.
Novi Sad may well be some 50 miles to the north of the capital where Wales face Serbia tomorrow, but the flashbacks to the feelings of that night almost five years ago will be inevitable.
The last time they stood in Belgrade’s Nikola Telsa airport, it was close to silence. The clock had moved past midnight, the terminal deserted aside from those in ties and tracksuits on the FAW’s chartered return flight a few hours after what had gone before.
Those not part of the squad exchanged glances with eyebrows raised of the shock what had just gone on, though not the players.
They sat or stood with heads bowed, barely able to hold conversations. Chris Coleman – just two competitive games into his dream job of managing his country – stood surrounded by his backroom team, his face of the same thunderous expression as he would have marking an antagonising centreforward from his playing days.
The thoughts would swirl around his head for days, just as they had from the moment the final whistle sounded on a 6-1 beating and the end of a World Cup dream, the bid from Brazil over within two games.
“The stadium was awful with the changing rooms part of what was like a clubhouse,” Coleman says in the book Together Stronger: The Rise of Welsh Football’s Golden Generation.
“Where the staff had to get changed there were no lights and the ceiling was hanging down. I remember sitting there after the final whistle and the atmosphere was something that I’ve never witnessed. I was crushed.
“Sat there, I had doubts whether I was capable of doing it.
“I can’t lie, those doubts were there. It was a job I wanted to do but I found myself asking did I come in at the wrong time? Could I do it?
“Right then was the lowest I’ve ever been. We didn’t just lose in Serbia, we embarrassed ourselves and when you do that you embarrass the country. I’d never felt that before.”
It would be wrong to say Wales had arrived in Serbia full of hope. Much of that had ebbed painfully away over the events of the past year. The deeplyaffecting death of Gary Speed took away a hero and took away the momentum the young side had built up at the end of the previous Euro qualifiers. Coleman had struggled in every way in replacing his friend.
The opening game of the campaign was supposed to be the big kick-start for the dawn of the golden generation, only for Belgium to ease past a Wales side reduced to 10 men and a manager reduced to excuses.
Joe Allen had missed the home game on the Friday night through illness, but was deemed fit enough to travel for the Tuesday night clash in the September evening humidity at the small, shambles of a ground towards the Croatian border.
The writing was on the wall from the moment the first goal went in on 16 minutes. Aleksander Kolarov’s 16thminute free-kick was a worthy strike, but the head bowed reaction of those in dark grey shirts spoke volumes.
Within eight minutes, Zoran Tosic benefited from an irresponsibility from midfield through to a wide-open defence.
Though Gareth Bale’s 31st-minute free-kick, Wales’ first goal under Coleman, gave some hope to the Wales fans stood on a stand-alone stone bank – minus toilet facilities – in the corner, soon they saw the leadenfooted nature of the players defending Welsh honour. The trademarks of work rate, of will, of mental strength now so obvious in the side were a million miles away.
“They were bad goals to concede, but we could see from the sidelines that it wasn’t just that which was the problem: everything was wrong. We were not balanced, we weren’t right physically or mentally. We were outside our comfort zone and you could see it,” recalled Osian Roberts in the aforementioned book, admitting the struggles to get over the loss of Speed were played out in brutal fashion that night.
“We were still quite inexperienced going into a lion’s den, but the big thing was that the psychological aspect of what had happened was still there.”
Sam Vokes agrees, saying that night was a culmination of the difficulties they had faced as a group. Wales had given up, Ramsey struggling more than most as the responsibility of the captaincy appeared to weigh him down. The more he tried, the more he failed, the more the frustration, the humliation showed on his face.