“You never learn more than when you get your ass kicked,” Craig Bellamy had said matter-of-factly of cherry-picking a friendly against England and, presumably, he kept telling himself that as Thomas Tuchel’s side eviscerated his bewildered Wales team within the opening 19 and a half minutes. Bellamy stood open-mouthed, eyes frozen, on the edge of his technical area after Bukayo Saka located the top corner of Karl Darlow’s goal to make it 3-0 and the reality is it should have been 4-0 inside 40 minutes. No wonder Bellamy found himself glancing towards one of the giant scoreboards.
In many ways the Wales manager predicted this, jesting a boxing promoter would not pit the teams together owing to the gulf between the squads, and 20 minutes in it felt worth pondering if there was any value in stopping the count. Bellamy defended selecting this fixture, insisting his squad would relish the challenge of facing a team fourth in the Fifa rankings and that the contest would provide him a barometer of where they stand before Monday’s crunch World Cup qualifier at home to Belgium. He spied similarities between England and Belgium and suggested the post-match analysis clips would retain their value rather than requiring them to start over.
