Craig Bellamy: "We had to dig in"
“It was hard work, really hard work,” says the Wales head coach in a BBC interview. “We knew beforehand, Kazakhstan is a very hard place to come. It has been for British national teams and club sides in recent years. You could see why today.
“It wasn’t as clean as we would have liked, we had to dig in. The players have that ability to dig in but there is more, there is more to come from them. We are a better team than we showed consistently today. How we started was really good but then the rhythm wasn’t quite there.
On Dylan Lawlor’s debut: “I was so impressed with Dylan Lawlor. He was so good. We knew it would be hard with the squad withdrawals. Dylan is a big plus from this week, we have gained a player.
On the next World Cup qualifier against Belgium: “I am not thinking about Belgium yet, we have Canada to play first. I want to see a better intensity, lots of the habits that have made us the team we are. We will take the win.”
Kazakhstan 0-1 Wales
Match report: All in yellow Kazakhstan, 114th in the Fifa rankings, represented a banana skin on an artificial surface in Astana but Wales took the points courtesy of a win that was anything but straightforward. Ben Fisher reports …
