Wales v Belgium: Memories a year on
Lille, Friday, July 1, 2016. The night a proud Welsh nation partied deep into the early hours... and quite a bit beyond, too! This was the evening when Chris Coleman’s Wales wonders overcame red-hot favourites Belgium 3-1 to rampage into the semi-finals o
THE WALES DRESSING ROOM
IT simply does not get any better than this. Chris Coleman, his management staff and the Welsh team are trying to take in the magnitude of what they have just achieved, but things are a little bit of a blur inside the confines of the dressing room.
The players are sitting there smiling at one another, exhausted from their efforts, exhilarated by what they have done.
Hal Robson-Kanu is getting texts from his former Reading team-mates about his Cruyff-turn wonder goal.
“They were saying ‘you try to do that every day in training to get you out of hole!’” he reflects with a smile. “The opportunity to actually do it in a game, however, is very rare, let alone one of this significance. And for it to come off, too...”
Minutes earlier, the eyes of the world upon them, Robson-Kanu, Gareth Bale and the rest of the team had been raucously singing ‘Please Don’t Take Me Home’ with their Red Wall of travelling fans and doing belly slides in front of them as they joyously celebrated their triumph.
Many of those delirious Welsh supporters nearly didn’t make the game, severe delays in the Channel Tunnel meaning frenetic last-minute dashes to the ground.
Thank goodness they did. Max Boyce christened the ‘I know cos I was there’ phrase for iconic Welsh rugby moments. This was Welsh football’s equivalent.
While those thousands of fans head into Lille city centre to party through the night, with similar celebrations in pubs and clubs up and down the land back home, the players have to come down from their high, travel back to their Dinard base, and prepare for the semi-final.
Wales in the Euro 2016 semi-finals. Still sounds surreal 12 months on, doesn’t?
Given Lille is a mere 10 miles from the Belgian border, this had been akin to a home game for Eden Hazard and the rest of his starstudded team.
The dice are loaded firmly against Wales, but it is the most perfect demonstration yet of the ‘Together Stronger’ mantra driving their Euro success.
Inside the 50,000 capacity Stade Pierre Mauroy there is a pocket of 4,505 Welsh supporters forming the Red Wall in one corner of the ground.
The rest of the crowd is pretty much Belgian.
On network TV, BBC commentator Steve Wilson says before the anthems: “The Welsh may be outnumbered... but they won’t be outsung.”
They aren’t. As the next two hours unfold, it is the Welsh fans making the most noise. It’s almost as if the cheers back home, from Cardiff to Connah’s Quay, can be heard out in France too. Make absolutely no mistake, the fans were a massive part of our success that night,” reflects goalscorer Vokes. “They drove us on, gave us extra energy. They were inspirational. When we got tired, it was those fans who gave us fresh impetus. Together Stronger.”
Few outsiders gave Wales much chance of winning. But while Belgium were littered with starstudded individuals, Coleman’s number two Osian Roberts explains: “For us it was about the collective. The team.”
He tells a story which perfectly demonstrates the special togetherness of this group, the quality that brought them through when the going got tough in Lille.
“We’d lost 2-1 to England in the group stages and defensively it was one of the best performances we have given,” begins Roberts.
“OK, they scored twice. But Jamie Vardy was in an offside position when the ball came to him off Ashley Williams’ head for the first, while Daniel Sturridge’s winner came after a number of ricochets. The ball could have gone anywhere.
“England hadn’t opened us up. However, in possession we just weren’t ourselves.
“Chris told the players in the dressing room ‘Whatever happens, we cannot go out of the tournament with people remembering how we played with the ball against England. We know we’re a lot better than that and we need to show it.
“That was the main driving force behind playing so well in beating Russia 3-0 in Toulouse and we did it again in the Belgium game.
“England was hard to take, though, and our resolve was being tested. We had been together for three-and-a-half weeks, training together, eating together, travelling together. Chris felt the players needed some space.
“He told them ‘Have tomorrow off. Go to the beach, head into town for a coffee, play golf. We’ll regroup the day after and prepare for Russia’.
“Within 10 minutes, Gareth Bale came to the staff room. ‘We’ve had a chat amongst ourselves and decided we don’t want people going their own way,’ he told us. ‘If any of us head outside the team hotel we stick together, players and management. We win together, we lose together.’
“Gareth’s attitude perfectly demonstrated the very team spirit our success is built on.
“Instead, every single one of us headed to a restaurant where we spent a fantastic three hours, enjoying one another’s company and talking about anything other than football. It really did the trick.
“So, when the going gets tough, as make no mistake it did against Belgium when we went a goal down early on, this togetherness and resolve really does carry the team through.”
THE PARIS POWER CUT
REWIND briefly to Wales versus Northern Ireland in the last 16 and another unexpected test of these players’ character.
“This whole tournament
experience was new for us and we weren’t quite sure what to prepare for,” says Roberts. “Suddenly it’s knockout football – if you lose, you head home the next day. Are we packing in our hotel rooms or not? Mentally it’s a challenge and we found ourselves facing a further one when there was a power cut in our hotel. We always do a presentation to the team just before a game, go through set-pieces and shape, really important in this case given how Northern Ireland play, and how they are such a danger from corners and free-kicks.
“Because there was no electricity we couldn’t do that this time, had to travel to the Parc des Princes without our normal preparation. Players are creatures of habit, used to their routine; this didn’t help the build-up. Something was missing.
“We kind of semi-wondered if Michael O’Neill and the Irish may have been behind it! But then we were saw lights were out in the whole district. This was for real.”
French legend Thierry Henry, who has done his coaching badges with Roberts at the FAW Trust, had come to offer his assistance to Wales.
“We had to evacuate the hotel. It was kind of surreal. Thierry out there on the street with us right in the middle of Paris, with security guys holding big rifles. As you can imagine, he wasn’t left alone by the fans! Anyway, we got to the ground having not done the necessary prep. Time to improvise. Fortunately we had the home dressing room, it’s massive and there’s a big TV screen right in the middle. We decided to link our presentation to that and went through it right at the last minute.
“We explained it would be a tight game, either won by a set-piece or a moment of individual magic. Gareth provided that stunning cross which Gareth McAuley could only divert into his own net.”
UNCERTAINTY, BUT BELGIUM LOOMS
THOROUGH preparation and planning is a huge thing for this Wales side and a nine-man team of scouts has been put together and based in Paris. Headed up by Martin Hodge, a former goalkeeper who worked as a coach for Malky Mackay at Cardiff, their role is to travel to matches and provide detailed dossiers on the opposition.
The logistics are a nightmare. Wales didn’t know if they would make the knockout stages themselves, let alone who they would be playing.
The decision is made to ensure every other team in the tournament is covered, by hook or by crook. It can take 12 hours to prepare these dossiers, the scouts often working until close to dawn from a night match, but no stone is left unturned as the strengths and weaknesses of every single player is analysed.
The reports are fed to Coleman, absorbed and the most crucial elements are put into a 15-minute presentation for the Welsh players.
Once Belgium have overcome Hungary 4-0, and Wales know they are next, Hodge and his team give the full lowdown.
The main focus surrounds Belgium’s danger on the counter. The Welsh players are shown the tape of a goal scored by Romelu Lukaku in the 3-0 group drubbing of the Republic of Ireland. The Belgians won the ball in their own penalty box – just 10 seconds on it was in the back of the Irish net.
The emphasis in training is placed on where the Welsh players need to be when they are in possession of the ball themselves, to ensure Hazard, Kevin de Bruyne and Lukaku are denied the space to counter. Painstaking work is done on positioning, with and without the ball.
“So, by the time it comes to the game, it becomes second nature,” explains Roberts.
“We want to dominate and create, of course, but you can’t always do that against the top teams. Chris Coleman is very big on this. He tells the players ‘You have to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable’. Sometimes you’ve just got to sit in, keep your shape, let them come onto you, block lines and pockets, don’t let them run through you.
“But when we do have the ball, we have to be mindful Belgium have three or four players who can open you up in an instant.
“Either way, the collective nature of the whole team is the key thing. The starting point for us is that even our best players are ready to give everything for the cause. Aaron Ramsey covered more ground than any other player in the tournament, Gareth Bale never stopped. They carry out the team plan to a tee. Because they do it, everyone else naturally follows.
“Belgium have the individuals; we have the team.”
THE DAY DAWNS
FRIDAY, July 1, has arrived and most pundits are saying Wales’ Euro journey ends this evening.
That doesn’t stop thousands of fans setting off from home to join the Red Wall already out in Lille.
One of them is Rhoose businessman Andrew Morgan, who with his friend Andy Smith chooses to head out at the 11th hour.