Rob Page has revealed the Wales captain, Aaron Ramsey, travelled with his teammates to Armenia for their crunch Euro 2024 qualifier despite being injured, but has urged his players to “suck the emotions” out of the game to achieve the desired result.
The vice-captain, Ben Davies, who will lead Wales on the pitch in Ramsey’s absence, said Wales’s “band of brothers” spirit is behind their resurgence in Group D. Wales reignited their hopes of reaching a fourth major tournament in five after beating Croatia last month to keep qualification in their own hands.
“We’re a tightknit group,” Davies said. “It’s nice when you have a group where you see the same faces every time you come and you end up playing as a family. I think we have shown that is where our success has been gained, by being a band of brothers out there fighting for Wales. We are very proud to be doing that.”
Ramsey is absent for Saturday’s meeting with Armenia and Tuesday’s encounter with Turkey, who have qualified already, because of a knee tendon injury but was determined to be with his teammates.
“Rambo’s travelled with the lads, which is brilliant,” said Page, the Wales manager. “It is [a boost], his presence around the changing room. I used to say it with [Gareth] Bale. Aaron falls into the same category for me. He’s the captain and he’s been wanting to travel.
“He’s been with the group all week. He’s done his little bits of work that he’s needed to for Cardiff. He’s gone off and done his own bits – we had to find a training ground for him earlier. But he wants to be around the boys and I think that speaks volumes about what we’ve got as a group.”
Wales lost 4-2 at home to Armenia and 2-0 away to Turkey in June, and the same opponents stand in the way of them reaching a third successive European Championship. “In that game we didn’t perform as well as we could have and Armenia played a very good game,” Davies said of the defeat to Armenia in the summer.
“We’ve had our backs against the wall and people probably doubted us even being in this situation coming into this round.”
Davies said qualification would be special for him and the rest of the squad. “This is the dream for us and it doesn’t matter if you’ve done it once or three or four times,” he said. “We’re confident as a group that on the day we can beat anybody. We’ve done that in the last two and we want to show that again.”
