Photograph: Nick Potts/PA
Wales need to pull another result out of the bag in Cardiff. Something close to the euphoria of beating Belgium in 2015 to all-but qualify for their first major tournament since 1958 or the joy of overcoming Ukraine in a nerve-shredding playoff to reach the World Cup in Qatar would do nicely.
With hopes of securing an automatic place at Euro 2024 in the balance, the value of victory on Sunday over the Group D leaders, Croatia, would be priceless, a performance for the ages a bonus. A win of any kind – unconvincing or cogent – could have a lasting effect heading into the final round of qualifiers next month.
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A 4-0 win over Gibraltar in Wrexham on Wednesday doubtless did wonders for confidence but Wales’s last competitive victory, a 2-0 win in Latvia last month, was a significant one. Beating a team now ranked 136th in the world not only alleviated pressure on Rob Page as manager but also ensured Wales remain in the conversation for a top-two berth.
The backdrop in Riga was interesting, too. To enter the modest, three-sided Skonto Stadium the team bus arrived via a kind of giant cat flap at one end of the adjacent Skonto Hall, the venue for the Eurovision Song Contest in 2003.
Then it was down to business: players limbered up inside the vast facility, only a metal barrier between them and about a dozen vaguely interested, Latvian schoolchildren with painted faces scribbling pictures on the other side of good-luck placards. Neco Williams and Harry Wilson seesawed on foam rollers, Ben Davies did a few shuttle runs. Ethan Ampadu, headphones on, appeared in the zone. David Brooks, who arrived as a substitute to seal victory, scrolled on his phone.
The atmosphere and surrounds will be more familiar at Cardiff City Stadium. Wales’s recent record reads two wins from 13 competitive matches but Davies, who opened the scoring in midweek, picked out a few of the more memorable occasions on home soil as reasons to be cheerful. World Cup playoff victories over Austria and Ukraine last year naturally stick out, as does the 2-0 win over Hungary in November 2019 that clinched passage to Euro 2020, when Aaron Ramsey scored twice and after which a giddy Gareth Bale bobbed around the pitch with a Wales flag bearing the words: “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order.”
Aaron Ramsey he has been ruled out against Croatia through injury. Photograph: Roman Koksarov/AP
It was Bale who scored when they held Croatia to a draw in the Welsh capital four years ago. Last year’s Nations League games against Belgium and the Netherlands, which ended in a draw and a stoppage-time defeat respectively, Davies says, should also count as evidence that Wales have the tools to pull off an upset.
“We have showed that we are more than capable of making our home in Cardiff a fortress and making it difficult for teams,” says Davies, who will again captain Wales in the absence of the injured Ramsey. “The Netherlands and Belgium are two of the best teams in Europe and we put good performances in and on another day could have got better results.
“Playing at home definitely gives us that bit of something special and we’re hoping in front of a good crowd that we can do something special again.”
The problem is Wales are short of match-winners; Bale, suited and booted as part of the delegation in Nyon on Tuesday as the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland received confirmation they will host Euro 2028, has long been honing his skills in a different sport, while Brennan Johnson, Ramsey and Rhys Norrington-Davies, who scored in that defeat to the Netherlands, are sidelined through injury. Worse still, Ramsey is set to miss the rest of this qualifying campaign – Wales visit Armenia before hosting Turkey in November – because of a knee problem sustained in training with Cardiff and may require surgery.
So Wales, already in a tight spot, must thrive without their key characters if they are to have any chance of filing another unforgettable night away with the others. “We realise the importance of this game,” Davies says. “We have put ourselves in this situation in the group where we need a result.
“As a squad, it is about instilling belief that we can go out there and get a result. We have shown in the past in Cardiff that we can pick up points and win games and it is the same mentality again: we go into it believing anything is possible.”
