Yeah I’m watching it now. Standard of football is like watching Cardiff City now in the championship! Mental!!
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Simon Davies 1-0
Yeah I’m watching it now. Standard of football is like watching Cardiff City now in the championship! Mental!!
Anyone else agree that although it was a hell of a crowd the lack of ‘organised’ singing/chanting etc emphasises that the Millennium Stadium with hangers on in the stadium wasn’t the ground for us.
If you look when the teams are being led out there is a man united flag being waved
Sad to see Gary speed playing
Rest in peace
A lot of hair on some of the Italians.
Feckers got their own back in the San Siro mind.
We should have qualified that campaign even after the Italy loss, had about 3 chances.
We barely deserved second. Serbia and Montenegro players had some falling out and a replacement XI won 1 point from 2 games with Azerbaijan and a trip to Finland. Once everyone had kissed and made up their first choice team beat us twice, quite comfortably from what I remember. The Italian win and performance was a distant memory over the last 4 qualification games. The Russia defeat was inevitable and expected of a side that had changed somewhat and Hughes should have gone after that defeat.
Not sure that the Russian defeat was inevitable as you say. As one who did the away leg and thought we were the better team, with Koumas playing his best game for Wales I agree we were bested in the home game but the Russians looked a lot fresher than our lot
Pre-Spain friendly, Giggs' was talking about hearing the anthem at the MS as reason to consider going back there, which I get, but the 90mins is definitely better in CCS currently.
My memory isn't great bit I seem to recall that we went for a point against Montenegro away who had had a poor run of games and were about to ditch their manager.
Hughes should have gone for the jugular, then we would not have needed anything against Italy away, just had to win our home games.
We drew one of them and still could have qualified as Italy stuttered.
We got to the play off against Russia and played Earnie, who was scoring for fun at the time, on the wing
Safe to say Hughes did not cover himself in glory.
We struggle to sell out the CCS at present so I can’t see us returning to the Principality Stadium. I am a member of the Red Wall and was also at the Italy match, great atmosphere and 72,000 tickets sold! Always surprised that we cannot sell out the CCS for every Welsh Match yet did when City were in the Premier League?
It was exasperating when Earnie came on on the wing after the hour. The energy levels between the two teams between the 4 days raised eyebrows at the time, particularly as one of the Russian team failed a drug test later. Regardless of the rights and wrongs to be in Toulouse when we put them to the sword was one of life's great pleasures.
As we all know I am not Welsh , but that was a fantastic evening , right up there for me.
The Russia game was one of the lowest points for me also. If you are going to play dour tactical football after the way they beat Italy , you have to get the result...
And the Russians had punched themselves out in the earlier games in Marseilles and Lille. Everyone I met before and after the game was friendly and charming. Though if you experienced the reception we had at the Rossiya Hotel off Red Square 12 years earlier you had an idea of how welcoming they can be to foreigners
I agree, Italy was unlike virtually every one of the "giant killing" Wales games I'd seen in my life before it, because it wasn't backs to the wall stuff, we went out, played good football and deservedly beat a fine side, but, from then on, the attitude changed even though we were playing inferior sides to Italy.
Of course, going over to Milan with a defensive mindset could be excused, but the attitude against the others seemed to be were as good as there now so let's not be stupid and throw away the great position we've got ourselves in.
Even after we'd just scraped into second place, Mark Hughes stuck to the cautious mindset against Russia - we did well enough over there where I agree with Cyril about Jason Koumas, but you do have to wonder when our best players, him and Danny Gabbidon, were, from memory (which may be playing tricks with me here), the only ones in the team that day from outside the Premier League. Unfortunately, Mark Hughes got caught between two stools in the second leg not knowing whether to attack or play on the break.
I accept that Earnie wasn't really the player us City fans used to think he was at times (his subsequent career proved that), but those Play Off matches came shortly after his great volley against Stoke and I can remember wondering if there was a more confident and in form striker in Britain as we went into the Russian games - he was in the form of his life, but even when Hughes finally did introduce him in the second leg, he couldn't bring himself to put Earnie in the position where he was most at home.
Watched the game again last night. Duw, we played well that night and with eleven Welsh born players out of the twelve used I believe.