The manager who will stand in front of the visiting bench at Wembley Stadium on Thursday night is a changed man.
Some may find it hard to recognise the enfant terrible who was once a scourge of referees, a connoisseur of conflict and a bubbling font of snarling, seething angst. The truth is that Craig Bellamy barely recognises himself.
‘I’ve found a level of peace,’ Bellamy says, as he sits with his head slightly bowed in a room at the Welsh FA’s Centre of Excellence in the Vale of Glamorgan, a few miles outside Cardiff. ‘I’ve stopped looking back.
‘Good and bad, it’s done. It’s nice being present. I’m allowing myself to breathe a little bit. The bad things I did used to beat me up inside but I’ve found some forgiveness within myself. I’ve learned to let things go. I’m good. I’m a good person. I could be better at times, but it’s OK.’
The manager who is building a reputation as an outstanding, cerebral coach after the work he did with Vincent Kompany at Anderlecht and Burnley and the success he has enjoyed in charge of Wales does not watch footage of himself as a player any more. It is partly because he knows he would not like what he saw. He is grateful for the career he had but full of regret for all that he did not know.
Bellamy, 46, played at the top of the game, for leading clubs such as Newcastle United, Liverpool and Manchester City but he was so driven that he was tormented by his ambition. He saw enemies everywhere and he found confrontation everywhere, both inside the clubs he played for and outside them, too.
Craig Bellamy (centre) is off to a strong start with Wales, winning six and losing only two of his first 12 matches in charge
Bellamy celebrates with Vincent Kompany, whom he worked under at Burnley and Anderlecht, after sealing promotion with the Clarets in 2023
The 46-year-old played at the top of the game, including in the Champions League and for his country
Part of his success as a coach – he has won six and only lost two of his opening 12 games in charge of Wales after he took the job 15 months ago – has been in the man-management that understands players will make mistakes. Part of it has been in telling his players not to make the same mistakes that he made.
Instead, he empowers them. He asks them to work like ‘animals’ when they do not have the ball and he encourages them to have the bravery to express themselves when they do have it. Results have followed. Wales won their Nations League group undefeated in November and were promoted to the competition’s top tier.
‘I wish that I had enjoyed it more when I was playing,’ Bellamy says. ‘All the stresses you end up putting yourself under; it’s not correct. It’s not realistic. I look back and I think: “Why did I act that way? Why was I so stressed over it? I enjoy this.” But the truth is I was miserable a lot of the time.’
I parrot the response that I have always parroted when I speak to Bellamy. I tell him that he needed the anger. He needed to play on the edge to be effective. He needed the chip on his shoulder. He needed to feel that the world was against him so he could show how wrong everyone was.
This time, he shakes his head. ‘No, I thought I needed the anger as well,’ he says. ‘I thought I’d be better for it. But actually, all I did was waste energy. I’d love to be able to have my time again and not do that. All you’re doing is losing energy.
‘Imagine the energy you’d have by not involving yourself with that, not moaning at this or moaning at that. I think I was always brought up in the game to believe that if you moaned and fought and played on the edge, it showed the fans you cared.
‘I know differently now. When you’re younger, you think you know everything and literally, you know nothing. When you are older, you know so much more, but the body can’t do it anymore.
‘But what I can do is give that knowledge to my Wales players. Before every game, I tell them the most important thing is we enjoy it. I know it’s a cliche but I mean it. The result won’t always turn out the way we want it to but I want you to come off that pitch thinking “I can’t wait to play again”, because if you don’t, I’ve done it wrong.
Wales won their Nations League group undefeated in November and have been promoted to the top tier
Harry Wilson scores Wales’ second goal during their 3-0 win over Liechtenstein in June
‘There were a lot of times as a player when I didn’t feel that. If we won, I just felt relief. A win meant I didn’t have to lock myself in a room for a couple of days and not talk to anyone, because that was what happened when we lost.
‘I believe being a coach allows you to be calmer. I think coaching allows me to be a better version of me and the person I want to be. And the coach I want to be is somebody who cares.
‘When I’ve got a player whose partner is about to give birth, I never make anything public, but I don’t want you in the squad. That’s more important. Go home, stay at home. Be there for the birth of your child. Don’t worry about us, there’s other games.
‘I wouldn’t have done that when I was a player. I would have been insanely against that as a player. If I became aware of a team-mate doing that, my reaction would have been different. How dare you? Can’t do that. No, this is this. This is more important.
‘I was brainwashed into Bill Shankly’s way of thinking: football’s more important than life and death. And it’s so wrong. It’s so wrong. Football is just enjoyment. And I think sometimes I definitely misused that.
‘What made me understand that? Life. Being in the real world. Realising that bad things happen. Things that can have a huge impact on your mental health. I still feel pressure because I still expect a lot from myself but I also understand that when you’ve done enough, there’s no more you can do.’
Wales are huge underdogs for the Wembley match. They have not beaten England since a British Home Championship tie at the Racecourse Ground in May 1984, haven’t won in England since 1977 and are ranked 30th in the world, 26 places below their opponents. Bellamy also calculates the total worth of the Wales squad that prepares for the game on Thursday will be £160m. England come in at £1.4bn, almost 10 times higher.
He does not seek to make any barbs at England’s expense, even if Wales have a proud Welshman in charge of their national team and England have a proud German, Thomas Tuchel. Bellamy believes in appointing the best man for the job. At a press conference on Monday, he joked that Tuchel’s expenses were probably the same as his wages.
Bellamy is acutely aware of the challenge he faces against an England side led by Thomas Tuchel on Thursday
But he insists that he’d rather face the best in the world than rack up easier victories
Back in that room at The Vale he smiles when he remembers one spell of time in the spring when he noticed that Tuchel was attending a game between Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool and Bellamy was at Caerau Ely’s 500-capacity Cwrt-yr-Ala ground, watching a Welsh Cup tie between the home team and Connah’s Quay on a pitch he says was a mudbath.
‘I understand the sensitivity behind having a German manager in charge of the England team,’ he says, ‘but I’ve always believed you have to pick the best person for the job. It would all be forgotten if he won the World Cup for England. For the fans, it comes down to this: “Just give us that moment.”
‘Tuchel’s a really good manager. I think he’s top. You have so much talent to pick from and when you go to the World Cup next summer, you are there to win it. It’s not semis and finals any more. You have to be winning it.
‘It’s like you’re this close. Your younger age groups are winning tournaments now and you have this very strong pool to pick from – you could put fringe players in the squad and still win it.
‘I want us to play the top nations. I have to. Could I have chosen an easier game for Thursday? Of course I could. But I want a top game before we play Belgium in our World Cup qualifier in Cardiff next week. We want the intensity that a game against England will bring.’
Bellamy has been showered with praise for the impact he has made since he took over from Rob Page as Wales boss. Wales have only lost one competitive game under his tutelage and even that was a heroic failure, a last-gasp 4-3 defeat to Belgium in Brussels in June after Wales had come from 3-0 down to equalise.
Bellamy’s influence on the fortunes of Wales goes beyond the pitch. He works tirelessly to continue the work started by his close friend, Gary Speed, travelling the length and breadth of the principality to supporters’ clubs in Neath and Porthcawl and Wrexham and Swansea and Anglesey and Pwllheli and Bangor and Colwyn Bay to conduct Q&As and spread his vision for the nation, and promote the spirit of togetherness that Speed identified as crucial to Welsh progress.
He talks more and more about big pictures now. Life has done that to him. The bad things he mentioned? Well, he was commendably open about his struggles with his mental health during and after the Covid pandemic, which were compounded by the isolation that came with coaching in Belgium with Anderlecht and being separated from his family.
He works tirelessly to continue the work started by his close friend, Gary Speed, who passed away 14 years ago
Bellamy is open about his struggles with his mental health, which were compounded during the Covid pandemic and his time in Belgium with Anderlecht
Bellamy also faced well-publicised financial issues that stemmed from bad investments made on his behalf and unending generosity to so-called friends, and which eventually resulted in him being declared bankrupt in 2023.
But overcoming those issues has made him uniquely qualified to help with the pressures players face and instilled an empathy in him that has become a powerful strand of his ability to extract the best out of his Wales players.
‘I’ve made more mistakes than anyone,’ Bellamy says, ‘so I’m not going to destroy you over one mistake, as long as it doesn’t happen on a continuous basis. I expect timings to be fulfilled but I also expect players to take responsibility.
‘It’s not for me to tell you what time you need to be in bed. Do you know why a player at this level has got to where he’s got to? Because he knows what time to be in bed. He knows how to look after himself. He has had to make sacrifices. Do you know how I know a player’s good on the ball? Because he wouldn’t have got to where he is if he wasn’t good on the ball. Now it’s up to me to bring that out.
‘I need to trust you completely on the pitch and so I need to trust you completely off it. And I think people respond better to that. I remember how Sir Bobby Robson made me feel like the best player in the world and I want every one of my players to feel that. I want you to believe I’m going to make you better than you ever believed you could be.
‘What people might see as small coaching details can change the outcome of games. I have to get you understanding how we play but I have to get the messaging right and I have to get the instructions right.
‘Now I want you to play forward, but you can’t play forward if your shoulders are closed. But if you open them just a fraction, you can see the world. You can see a completely different game. That also has an effect on the player pressing you. He can’t press you if your shoulders are open.’
Bellamy talks like an evangelist, a young coach bursting with ideas and eager to spread his message and move his team forward. The Belgium game next week is critical to Wales’ hopes of finishing top of their qualifying group – and gaining automatic passage to the World Cup – but Bellamy remains bullish about his team’s prospects.
Kieffer Moore’s winning goal in Kazakhstan last month has put Wales in a strong position to contend for automatic qualification for next summer’s World Cup
Kevin De Bruyne’s last-gasp winner for Belgium condemned Wales to an agonising defeat in June, but they have the chance for revenge next week
They are a point behind group leaders North Macedonia and level with Belgium, who have a game in hand, with three matches to play, including both of their main group rivals at home.
‘I expect us to be at the World Cup,’ he says, ‘and I expect to go there and do well. It might not happen and if it doesn’t, it’s not going to change me.’
Nothing will change his love for Wales, either. He rebuts any idea that he is anti-English. ‘I partly grew up in England,’ he says. ‘I don’t have a dislike of English people at all but I like being Welsh and I like what we are.
‘I think it suits me. I always felt I was different. I grew up in England from the age of 15 but I always felt I wasn’t you. I have an identity that’s different. I’m of a different group of people.
‘And I always liked that. It was redness and being Welsh. So I never wanted to be the same as other people. I never see myself the same. And that’s not good or bad.
‘I always make sure people know where I’m from. I belong to a different people who really look out for each other, who have our own identity, our own language, who see things a little bit differently at times. And I enjoy being that.
‘And even our history, I’m so proud of that as well. And not just in football terms, but as a country going all the way back to Owain Glyndwr and the struggles that he had in the 15th century after he had been proclaimed the Prince of Wales.
‘I’ve got a tattoo of him on my arm. And you know the thing I loved about Wales, the thing that’s always lived with us: we never sold him out.
Bellamy is a proud Welshman, representing his country 78 times as a player and scoring 19 goals – those rank ninth and seventh respectively on Wales’ all-time leaderboards
‘I expect us to be at the World Cup,’ he says, ‘and I expect to go there and do well. It might not happen and if it doesn’t, it’s not going to change me’
‘He was on the run from English forces for years and years, hiding out in the hills, with a bounty on his head, and we never gave him up. That’s how powerful he was and how important he was.
‘Loads of people lost their lives so he could still live. And even today, where he’s buried, no one knows.
‘And I think that shows who we are. We don’t sell out. We will look after us and we’ll look after that person because he’s ours. A lot of people still feel that old enmity towards the English but I don’t.
‘I don’t hold you responsible for what happened 600 years ago. We’re different. You’ve made us quite cool. I’m grateful to you.’
