Euro 2008: Wales - Looking ahead to Cyprus and San Marino.

I don’t if you’ve read the articles about possible scenarios that may unfold in the Euro 2008 qualifying Group D. Since we gave Slovakia a deserved beating last month Welsh mathematicians have been working out what it would take for Wales to take the race to second place right to the last game. I know how highly unlikely it all is but it’s been nice to be able to still talk about qualification at such a late stage no matter how unrealistic it is. Qualification may be out of reach but third place is tantalisingly lined up for us. On form Wales can beat Cyprus and San Marino over the next few days and that would leave us to face Ireland at home next month with a lot to play for.

Cyprus away will be difficult. Their mauling of the Republic of Ireland back in October 2006 surprised pretty much everybody in football but they’ve followed it up with a win against San Marino and an impressive 1-1 draw with Germany. To date it’s the only points the Germans have dropped in the group. Combine this home form with their convincing friendly victory over us two years ago and you realise you cannot take anything for granted. In an interview this week Toshack mentioned that when teams go to play Cyprus there is almost a holiday, training game feel to it and this has been the undoing of certain national teams. He attributed our 2005 loss over there to this strange complacently, a game he recognised could have cost him his job. Hopefully he’s pinpointed what went wrong for us last time and we can have a similar performance to the one during our 3-1 victory at home last year, where we pretty much walked all over them. The fact of the matter is if we are to show progression and development under John Toshack only a win will do. Our task isn’t helped by the loss of Hennessey, Koumas and more importantly Bellamy. That said providing we don’t lose anyone else we should have enough about us to complete the job. It’s a similar squad to the one we sent over to beat Bulgaria in August. Obviously the lack of first team football on offer for many of our squad is a worry, our strikers in particular. But you hope the likes of Bale, Ledley and Davies (all playing well at present) will get us through. Score prediction? The way results are going in world football at present I wouldn’t even want to try and guess.

As for our mid week game, no disrespect to San Marino but anything but a win for us against them would be a disaster. Again they gave Ireland a tough game at home but we really shouldn’t be too worried. A win and a good one at that is what’s expected. If we do stutter against Cyprus the possibility of a returning Bellamy should liven things up.

I won’t be going to either game. I was planning to go to San Marino but it fell through because of various reasons. I’m hoping to be going to Frankfurt in November though. Luckily for a none Sky subscriber as myself the Cyprus game is being shown on S4C and the San Marino game is apparently being shown on BBCi so red buttons at the ready.