WALES EURO 2024 QUALIFYING LOSS TO POLAND LEAVES BIG QUESTIONS IN NEED OF ANSWERS

“One of those.” An accompanying shrug. A cursory pint sip. Stick it in the list. Or better, the pantheon. Yes, the pantheon. Because it’s a pantheon at this point hosting all of the Near Misses which Wales have endured and suffered when bidding to reach a major tournament. Here, take another.

Wales will not be in Germany this summer, Dan James’ spot-kick – the tenth in a spectacularly dazzling succession of penalties – saved by Poland keeper Wojciech Szczesny after 120 minutes of an excruciatingly fraught Euro 2024 qualifying play-off finale played under the lights of Cardiff City Stadium. A first-ever competitive penalty shoot-out in 148 years for Wales and it ends in gruelling, Polish-flaring agony. The last swing of a boot, the last kick of a match.

How cruel. How Wales.

Which points to the problem. The tension gurgling here and has been since Wales’ incredible dumping out of Euro 2020 by Denmark in the last 16 is whether this is and, better, should be Wales. Are Wales transcended past their tragicomic history of missing out, or were the past few years a brief technicolour sojourn, their Icarus wings finally having flown too close to the sun?

Tuesday evening's display was valiant, glorious, sweaty, gutting. All those adjectives which generally incur eyerolls at their obvious straw-clutching when tangible execution and quality are absent. Sometimes their needed. Sometimes they shouldn't be.

The sight of striker Kieffer Moore in Wales' starting lineup in lieu of David Brooks left mouths agape and others toiling with familiarly grave reservations over manager Rob Page’s tactical acumen. Was the former Port Vale manager not playing into Poland’s hands by checkmating muscles? An emphatic victory over Finland felt something akin to edifying for lingering Page doubters. A glance at the team sheet rankled that.

Brooks, it transpired, had been sick since the Finland match, incapable of training on the pitch all week, a fate forced hand beyond Page's control. But as the match wore on, the confident convictions at the match’s start began to ebb. Wales had the better chances of a full-blooded affair, then they didn’t. And it’s there, as Poland smelled that Wales weren’t going to barge them down or slice them open, that the visitors bore forward and Wales needed positive structural changes. Instead, bizarre substitutions, the removal of Brennan Johnson, a shoe-horning in of James, Wales’ best threat at this point, at right wing-back for the sake of keeping a floundering structure intact.

There are two prisms through which to consider Tuesday’s loss and everything which unfurled before it. The simplistic argument (let’s call it the shoulder shrug) goes that this is what happens when there is no out-and-out star. Who was going to wrest the game and carve the campaign in their image? Who was going to snatch a moment and will it into fruition by sheer force of personality? The word transition comes to play here.

The other argument, more nuanced, goes that a better manager gets more out of this squad. Transition becomes a difficult argument in the face of 488 caps amongst the starting XI, another 92 off the bench. Since taking over from former Wales winger Ryan Giggs, Page has overseen 43 matches.

A sub-plot of the second argument considers that Poland too brooked a turbulent and at times disastrous qualifying campaign. But after a humiliating loss to group minnows Moldova, the Polish FA responded: gone was manager Fernando Santos, in came new boss Michal Probierz. Poland’s fall from grace was arguably more devastating. A World Cup campaign in which they lost to only eventual finalists France and Argentina descended into a Euro 2024 qualifying farce of epic proportions. But the question of whether to stick or twist, to gamble in the midst of a campaign, applies to both teams. Tuesday’s result speaks to the merits of both.

Reminiscing on Wales’ previous failures to reach major tournaments in the lead-up to Tuesday very nearly had the effect of watering down. There lurked the urge to speak about them firmly in the past tense, reeled off the top of one’s head like the years of children’s birthdays – 1977, 1983, 1993, 2003 –, all rhythmic and conditioned but crucially with cushioned space separating then and now. Tuesday night was a reminder of the molecular miseries this sport can produce, not that any needed it so soon, nor did it feel deserved.

Page insisted in his pre-match press conference that the margins (is that word small enough?) of one penalty testified to the growth of the team, the trajectory upon which they are, in which he insists the FAW see and place faith. The sentiment bares legs. A first qualifying campaign since Gareth Bale's retirement, in which bit-part players were finally handed oxygen to breathe, would never be seamless. Yet, Tuesday night's performance was better than that against Ukraine. Poland didn't have a shot on target for 120 minutes. This play-off territory might be growing increasingly familiar for Wales fans, but this iteration was compellingly different to any previous: far less man-bunned and sinewy and heliocentric yet still burning with possibility.

But the margins on Tuesday night were wider than a penalty. They were finishing third in a navigable qualifying group, taking one point from a team ranked 94th in the world. They were tactical naivety and stuttering transition. In Wales’ last 15 matches, they won five (two being friendlies, including one against Gibraltar), lost five and drew five. Of eight qualifying matches, Wales managed three wins. You will struggle to find a more striking visualisation of bare passableness.

Whether a management re-jig alters those realities is a more than fair appraisal to raise. But Page’s tenure is complex. The former centre-back took to the helm at a time of turbulence. He took Wales to a first World Cup. That Bale played a significant role in the dragging over the line is a necessary caveat. But there have been brilliant comprehensive performances here, along with masterclasses in catastrophe. Win last night and Page's star is exalted. Lose, the guillotines emerge. Football is never so binary. Neither is management.

Six months ago Connor Roberts sat in the Welsh footballing doghouse. The Burnley defender, now on loan to Leeds United, was dealing in hard truths: “We [Wales] would be naïve to think that we’re going to qualify for every single tournament going forward and win loads of games. We're still a small nation in the grand scheme of things."

Roberts’ sentiments bombed, pilloried on social media and held up as evidence of a lingering defeatist attitude that was holding Wales back from finally shaking off its imposter syndrome. Wales did qualify for major tournaments now. They’d done so three times out of four. No one had to ask for a fourth out of a fifth in the name of politesse.

Six months on, captain Ben Davies commanded a huddle and declared there was more to come. Around them, Roberts' previous hard truths stared back despairingly. The question is: should they have?

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2024-03-27T12:22:27Z dg43tfdfdgfd