Wales preparing for crunch World Cup qualifiers under Craig Bellamy

The latest Wales sport headlines, from Daniel Wales. 03/06/25

Transcript

00:00Wales men's football head coach Craig Bellamy has spoken of the two upcoming World Cup qualifiers at home to Liechtenstein and away to Belgium,

00:10which could be pivotal if Wales are wanting to qualify for the 2026 World Cup in America, Canada and Mexico.

00:17Yeah, look, they're massive games. June's always a tricky period with the amount of players we have from EFL.

00:31Having a month off, it's not set up for international football.

00:37We've had one or two problems with that over the past few years.

00:40Next year probably will change because the amount of numbers we have going into the Premier League, hopefully.

00:49Because if you look, now they've just finished, then they have a week of rest is perfect than going into a camp.

00:55Now the boys from the EFL have had three and a half weeks off.

01:00That's not acceptable to go into international football.

01:04We understand that. Everyone in this room would understand that.

01:07So we have to put on a camp. We have to keep the boys training.

01:11And Wales women's player Rhiannon Roberts has talked up the current squad depth that the Wales women's national team has

01:17ahead of the European Championships this summer in Switzerland,

01:22in which Wales will face England in their group and will be hoping to progress out of the group stage

01:27and into the knockout rounds as deep into the tournament as they can go.

01:33Like I said earlier, the foundations now are out defensively. We've been fantastic.

01:37I think we've conceded the least amount of goals in the league that we're in at the minute,

01:42which is real credit to the whole team.

01:47And now it's just an area where the next two games we can really focus on and put a little bit more pressure on us

01:53to go and take our chances, create as many chances as possible against top nations.

01:58I think that's the thing. Our squad now has got so much strength and depth,

02:02and that's why it's really hard to judge what the squad's going to be like for the Euros,

02:08because it's just really difficult.

02:10The strength and depth in the squad now is unbelievable,

02:13and that's what you want as a manager.