Robert Page’s Wales side picked up their first victory of the World Cup Qualifying campaign with a cagey 1-0 victory over Czech Republic at the Cardiff City Stadium on Tuesday evening.
‘’It’s been a tough week because, when you look at the fixtures coming into camp; Belgium away, Mexico in the middle, two top-10 seeds in the world, and then you’ve got the Czech Republic,’’ claimed Page.
‘’To come away with three points and a win against Mexico was a great return and I couldn’t be more proud of the players.’’
‘’Ryan set something moving a couple of years ago when he took over, and we’ve just kept the wheels going along and credit to them, the players.’’
‘’Coming into the camp, being greedy we would have wanted four points, but we would have absolutely taken three at the start of it.’’
A late Gareth Bale cross which found Daniel James in the box to head home was the difference between the two sides.
When asked about the goal, Page responded, ‘’We worked on it all week. Of course, you’ve got to think on your feet in situations. We’ve got Kieffer [Moore] in the box who thrives off crosses coming into the box, so little things like putting [Gareth] Bale on the left and DJ [Daniel James] on the right to go out and get crosses.
‘’Bale did one part of it, but we didn’t see DJ attacking the back post, we thought it would have been Kieffer. What a goal. What a header, and he deserves all the credit he’s going to get.’’
‘’When we’ve got Kieffer on the pitch, what we need to do is get down the outside and we need to get crosses into the box. DJ going down the right side with his right foot and Gareth going down the outside with his left foot. Gareth did his bit, he got a great cross in, and normally it would be Kieffer attacking it at the back post, but this time it was DJ.’’
Joe Rodon became the hero even later on, blocking a goal-bound Ondrej Celustka effort from close range in injury time.
‘’It’s as good as a goal. As defenders, that’s what they pride themselves in. Sometimes you’ve got to throw your body on the line. I thought they all did it; Meps [Chris Mepham], James Lawrence, Ethan [Ampadu] when he went back, but what a block from Joe Rodon that was.’’
Each side finished the game with 10 men, with Connor Roberts and Patrick Schick both being dismissed in the second half.
‘’Obviously, it benefitted us to start with when they got [a player] sent off. We put Kieffer on, we wanted H [Harry Wilson] as a 10, we wanted that extra centre-forward on the pitch. Then, when Connor got sent off, we had to make a change again, and we had to adapt.’’
When asked about how he felt after the game, Page replied, ‘’Pride. Absolute pride of the performance they gave. It wasn’t the best performance we’ve had, but sometimes you have to find a way to win, it doesn’t have to be pretty.
‘’We knew we had to do the ugly side of the game really well today because they [Czech Republic] pride themselves on that. They played two competitive games back-to-back and they were fit. They could have gone on for another 10 minutes. So, we knew we had to defend the box, we knew we had to pick second balls up, we knew we had to match them physically, and hopefully then hurt them when we got the ball.’’
(Featured image: Lewis Mitchell)
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