It wasn’t only the heart and head of Craig Bellamy that ached at the conclusion of this international break. His fist had taken a beating, too.
He explained as much on Tuesday night, after Wales drew their friendly against Northern Ireland. The throbbing owed something to what happened at half-time, when his side trailed 1-0 in a fixture no one needed to see.
Except Bellamy, it would seem. To him, and just about everybody else, the game was a dismal substitution for a World Cup play-off against the Italians, but it was a game nonetheless. And it was a game they were not only losing, but in which they were playing ‘s***’. His word.
Hence the rage when his players returned to the dressing room at the Cardiff City Stadium. ‘It was the first half-time I had to go in and really go,’ he said. ‘My hand’s still hurting from hitting the table.’
The context here is key. It was a meaningless friendly but not a friendly without meaning. Not to Bellamy – it accounted for 10 per cent of the match time he gets with his players each year and he’s an every-second-counts kind of guy. Lowering the standards against Northern Ireland? That’s not for him.
And so he woke on Wednesday with a bruised hand, to go with his festering regrets over the Bosnia defeat last Thursday, the impact of which was emphasised when the latter beat Italy on penalties to reach the World Cup. That concluded around about the time Bellamy was explaining why the table bore the brunt of his frustrations.
Wales have won eight and drawn five of their 18 games under Craig Bellamy
His side suffered penalty shootout heartbreak after losing to Bosnia and Herzegovina in their World Cup play-off clash
‘F***’s sake,’ he said once that particular penny had dropped. ‘That hurts even more.’
There is a conversation to be had about the value of passion in a manager. It’s one that usually carves a lazy trail to Kevin Keegan and the conclusion that passion alone isn’t enough.
Except that line of thought does Bellamy a grave injustice, which is a point worth noting when a few misguided souls might be questioning if he is the right man to lead Wales in their efforts to reach Euro 2028, a tournament they will partially host.
You don’t steer a squad drawn predominantly from the Championship to group A of the Nations League on passion alone. Same goes for winning eight and drawing five of his 18 games and putting five goals on Belgium across two qualifiers.
That they lost both those ties 4-3 and 4-2 is a signpost of their strength and weakness – they attack with speed, they dominate possession, they are exciting to watch but they are open at the back. That is a shortcoming that talks to Bellamy’s tactical decisions, but it also speaks about resources – three of those eight Belgian goals came after the 75th minute.
As we saw against Bosnia in the moments before Edin Dzeko’s late equaliser, a manager is often only as strong as his bench. Does Bellamy always make the best choices with his substitutions? Hard no. Is he spoilt for choice with his options? Same answer.
At the top of Bellamy’s tree, Harry Wilson has proven himself an excellent player with Fulham this season but he isn’t Gareth Bale. Just as Ethan Ampadu is impressive but isn’t Aaron Ramsey.
Smaller populations like Wales are more vulnerable to the rises and falls of the tides, of course, and currently Bellamy’s job is to exceed the sum of modest parts. He did that by taking Wales to the brink of a World Cup, which remains an achievement despite FIFA’s vandalism of the process. It’s one reason why Celtic have been sniffing around him for months.
Bellamy’s future appears to be in doubt – but the Welsh FA must do everything they can to convince him to stay on in the role
For Wales’s sake, Bellamy simply must stay. To that goal, he says there is nowhere he would rather be than leading his country and that takes us back to the value of passion.
To the nature of a man who tells his players they must not swap shirts because there is no guarantee they will get another. A man who follows that instruction with something similar – don’t you dare drop that shirt crest-down on the floor.
In club football I can imagine Bellamy would be too exhausting for some players, even if he has made it his aim in this gig to shed old reputations.
Maybe he has mellowed, or perhaps that bruised fist shows he is a work in progress, but for now the international game would seem to offer him better rhythms. We shouldn’t forget this is a coach who once joked to me that he previously shared a psychologist with Ronnie O’Sullivan and ended up being the more demanding client.
But he is also what Wales needs. I wrote in a column a couple of years ago about how his early months in this job had been dominated by eight-hour road-trips to the most rural provinces of Wales on heart-and-mind missions that regularly extended until 2am. Places like Machynlleth, Llanrwst and Bryngwran.
My favourite tale traced west to Llechryd, a village of fewer than 900 people, where a child in a school hall asked if he had any regrets from his life. Bellamy threw in a theatrical pause before responding: ‘You do know who I am, right?’
To those with a vested interest in Welsh football, Craig Bellamy is still the answer.
