Thanks to 1-1 draws with both Armenia and Turkey, Wales will have to settle for the play-offs in their attempts to qualify for Euro 2024 in Germany next year. Daniel Wales and James Peej-Watkins discuss the situation.
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00:00 Wales missed out on automatic qualification for the European Championships. They go into
00:07 the playoffs. If we look at the two recent internationals in which they were wanting
00:11 to get through, they didn't quite get the results they wanted to. If we start with Armenia,
00:15 a 1-1 draw, was that disappointing from your point of view?
00:18 I think that's more than disappointing. I think that, if you look at the home leg as
00:22 well, we struggled to beat, we haven't beaten Armenia, our home ran away. We needed a win.
00:28 We could have easily just gone home with a 1-0. It didn't have to be anything special.
00:31 We just needed to win it. We couldn't put two goals past Armenia. Things went against
00:37 us early on, conceded in the first few minutes. Armenia aren't the kind of side that should
00:43 be challenging Wales to that extent. We shouldn't be falling short to Armenia. It's such big
00:48 games as well. When you're friendly here and there, when you get those lucky things, this
00:54 shouldn't have happened this time around. Not at all. It was poor display all round,
00:58 not good finishing, didn't play well. It was very disappointing.
01:03 Then against Turkey, of course, you still needed something from that game to keep the
01:06 hopes alive. Once again, a 1-1 draw, that put the nail in the coffin. As much as Turkey
01:13 are perhaps a better side than Armenia, were you again not so happy that Wales couldn't
01:16 get that three points?
01:17 Obviously, as a fan, you're disappointed. But the display was a completely different
01:23 game to the Armenia game. Wales were attacking on the front foot early on. I was thinking
01:29 in the first half when I was watching, I'd never really seen Wales play such open attacking
01:35 football at times. It wasn't all game, don't get me wrong. It was only a here and there
01:39 in fleeting moments. But we looked good, we looked positive. As the game went on, we got
01:45 the goal. A great goal as well from Nico Williams. Then as it went on to the second half, Turkey
01:52 came back into it more and more and more. Definitely a few refereeing decisions went
01:57 the wrong way. But we never put it to rest. We should have got a couple of goals up when
02:04 we got the chance, but that never happened. We were relying on Turkey late on to not get
02:11 lucky, but they did get lucky. It didn't make any difference in the end, Croatia beating
02:16 Latvia, but disappointing to draw both those games.
02:19 Of course, it means the playoffs for Wales now. You face Finland in the semi-final of
02:29 the bracket, and then it's a possibility that you could play Estonia or Poland. Firstly,
02:33 if we look at Finland, surely that's a winner. I know we've just mentioned Turkey and Armenia
02:38 not being beaten by Wales, but Finland, they only just scraped past San Marino quite recently.
02:43 So surely that gives Robert Page and his men some confidence.
02:46 I've seen us beat Finland in the last few years. It was only a few years ago we had
02:50 them in the Nations League. It wasn't dominating displays, but we beat them. I'm not sure if
02:56 it was home-and-away, but we definitely beat them, and we definitely can beat them again.