Gareth Bale’s Friend Team: Who is the Wales Team?

Having defeated the resistance of the Scottish team (3: 1), the Ukrainian national team will play in the final of the European qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup, against a rather mysterious opponent for many Ukrainian fans – Wales was without stars from the football sky, but the first since 1958, which is now far away It has a very strong squad to reach the finals of the world championships once.

Who is the Wales national team right now and who are the main stars on the field? Let’s find out now…

Trainer

The most interesting thing about the Welsh team starts with the person of the head coach. Legally, he is legendary former Manchester United midfielder Ryan Giggs, who signed a corresponding contract in January 2018, but de facto the Welsh coach’s duties are performed by Giggs’ 47-year-old assistant, Robert Page.

Why is there such a mess? The thing is, Giggs is accused of bodily harm to a girl at the end of 2020. In April 2021, literally on the eve of the team’s launch in the final part of Euro 2020, the Football Association of Wales decided to dismiss Giggs due to this scandal and unwillingness to tarnish the national team’s reputation. Head coach of the team in the continental championship. That is, Page was de facto at the helm of Galli, who continues to carry out these duties to this day, as the situation around Giggs was still not closed.

Robert Page is not a very famous character in the football world. As a footballer, he mainly played for his hometown of Watford and after the end of his career went into coaching, and first as an assistant. On his own, Page only managed to work as head coach at Port Vale and Northampton Town, after which he left for junior and youth football and mentored the Wales U-17, U-19 and U-21 teams. In August 2019, Ryan Giggs called Page’s head coaching team in the country, and Robert happily accepted the challenge.

first magnitude star

There’s no point in looking for someone more famous on this team than 32-year-old Gareth Bale. This Welshman became a cult figure in his homeland while playing for Tottenham, and after moving to Real Madrid for the then-record 101m euros in September 2013, he has completely transformed into the world’s top caliber star.

Unfortunately, Bale’s career in Real Madrid did not go as the ardent fans of this player dreamed. Frequent injuries prevented Gareth from focusing entirely on football, and at one point put Real Madrid in third place on his list of interests, after his home country of Wales and golf. A serious scandal then arose around Bale’s statement, which greatly damaged the relationship between the player and the club’s management as well as Blancos fans.

In the 2021/22 season, Bale spent a lot of time in the Real Madrid infirmary, eventually playing in only 7 matches in all competitions for Madrid and scoring 1 goal. But despite this, Bale will be ready to help Wales against Ukraine, and Robert Page has already stated that.

The figure of Gareth Bale for the Welsh national team is as important as the figure of Andriy Shevchenko for Ukraine. Let the Welsh not win the Ballon d’Or, which the Ukrainian managed to do, but Gareth has 5 simultaneous victories in the UEFA Champions League with Real Madrid – an outstanding indicator! Therefore, in Wales, high hopes are placed on Bale, and the football player himself really wants to go to the World Cup, because this is probably the last chance for him – Gareth will turn 33 in mid-July …

Team leaders

Besides Bale, there are other well-known and bright football players in the Welsh national team. First of all, it is worth emphasizing Aaron Ramsey, Ben Davis and Daniel James.

The 31-year-old midfielder Aaron Ramsey started the season at Juventus but was loaned to Scottish Rangers in the winter and failed to defend the home league title but reached the Europa League final, where he was only on penalty kick. lost to Eintracht Frankfurt in the shootout. Ramsey is certainly a very strong player, but his best years seem far behind him. So he didn’t shine for Rangers, only appearing in the 118th minute in the Europa League final, and it turned out to be the only player on the field who didn’t notice his attempt at the penalty shootout. . Ramsey’s failure has been fatal for Rangers and Juventus are not willing to keep Welsh in the squad for the future despite his contract until the summer of 2023…

Ben Davis, 29, has been playing for Tottenham Hotspur for the past eight years and has played three hundred games for the Spurs. He is a very experienced and quality defender who can play both left and centre. Davis is an incredibly important figure for the Welsh team and so there’s no doubt that this back with Ukraine will appear in the starting lineup and “drink the blood” of our forwards and attacking midfielders.

Finally, 24-year-old Daniel James is part of the new generation of Welsh football. He moved from Swansea to Manchester United for €18m in 2019, where he was initially given big advances, but the young winger failed to deliver. Being second Ryan Giggs in the eyes of Old Trafford regulars has been an incredibly difficult task and James went to Leeds last summer and gave United some good cash on his transfer, as the peacocks left with 29 million. euro. In the 2021/22 season, James did regular match training at his club and took it with the national team as well. This player is definitely worth fearing, especially if he gets the guts. In another case, there is a chance that James will fall at some point and literally unravel on the field.

The road to the playoffs

In the qualifiers for the European qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup, the Wales team was promoted from Group E. There, the Welsh performed quite well, leaving only the undisputed favourite against the Belgians. It was Belgium at the very beginning of the cycle that brought Wales the only defeat in the group stage (1:3). After that, Page’s bodyguards no longer lost, including defeating the Czech Republic at home (1:0), smashing Belarus (5:1) and drawing with the same Belgians (1:1) in the final round. True, the local fortifications did not help Wales to open up the Estonian defense, where the match against the Baltic states ended in an unexpected goalless draw.

As a result, Wales beat the Czechs by one point in the group but still qualified for the playoffs, but through the League of Nations. In the semi-final match, Galli in March, unexpectedly for many, but in principle on business, defeated the strong Austrian team (2: 1), which allowed Page’s team to reach the final and now play against Ukraine.

game scheme

In recent games, Page has clearly been using a three defensive line-up. Thanks to the flexible play of the full backs, he can easily turn into both 3-5-2 and 5-3-2, both by moving forward and, on the contrary, by sitting a little closer to his targets.

Wales almost never tries to control the ball. Instead, this team will try to pass the ball to the opponent so that when they make a mistake and interfere, they will try to get on their offense as quickly as possible. It is worth noting the Welsh’s special tie-in to long balls – on average 12.5% ​​of passes were long in matches of the Welsh national team over the past calendar year. For comparison, in Ukraine, this figure is only 7.9%, but it somehow annoys the head coach of the Blue-Yellows, although many observers consider the style of play of our team under Oleksandr Petrakov unpretentious.

It is worth emphasizing the overall performance of the Wales team. Its players excel in martial arts, trying to cut the ball as often as possible, but not too often resort to excessive active pressure. For example, with the Austrians, Welsh had a PPDA of 34.1 versus 5 for his opponent, and the scoreboard went up to 2:1 in favor of the British.

Therefore, Wales’ style of play may be the most inappropriate for Ukraine. Apart from three centre-backs, which will not be difficult to pass, this team is not looking for excessive risk. To some extent, the match may resemble the proverb “he found a scythe on the stone”, especially if Petrakov decides to play it safe and escalate to anger. In this case, individual personalities can decide on the outcome of the conflict, and here it will be interesting to consider who will be stronger on a particular evening – Ballet or Yarmolenko, James or Tsygankov …

history of conflicts

The history of the clashes between the Welsh and Ukraine teams consists, so to speak, of three separate pages. Officially, the teams crossed paths in the 2002 World Cup selection, after which both matches ended with the same score of 1:1. And in the spring of 2016, at NSC Olimpiyskiy, Ukraine beat Wales 1-0 in a friendly match, and Andriy Yarmolenko became the author of the winning goal, who still remains the leader of the Blue-Yellows and, like Bale, dreams of participating in the final part of the World Cup…