Welcome to the ‘ridiculous’ international football match nobody wanted to play

Tommie Collins, a Wales supporter, was struggling to disguise his deflation.

“Obviously if we were going to play Italy, it was going to be a massive occasion,” he said. “Now we’re playing in a dead rubber and people have been asking if they can have their money back.”

He was not alone. Wales and Northern Ireland were hoping to stage World Cup qualification parties on Tuesday; instead, they had to throw a wake. After losing their playoff semi-finals to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Italy respectively on Thursday, FIFA’s schedulers decreed they had to play each other in a match that suited nobody in Cardiff, and finished 1-1.

The same applied for all the countries that lost in those semi-finals, with the Republic of Ireland playing North Macedonia, Slovakia facing Romania and Ukraine hosting Albania. They were all dressed up as ‘international challenge’ matches; in reality, they were the most lifeless of dead rubbers.

There was a logistical reason for it — essentially, to fulfil FIFA’s new international match calendar, which means every country must play twice in March across an eight-day period — but it still seemed cruel.

“Everyone is a bit flat and deflated,” said another Wales fan, Gwenllian Evans. “Fans are still feeling the heartbreak from Thursday night.”

In Dublin, Ireland’s game ended 0-0, but fans were at least trying to put a brave face on things. “It was always going to be a difficult game for us and our fans,” striker Troy Parrott told RTE after the match. “To see so many of them cheering us on in a friendly on a Tuesday night really warms my heart.”

It was hard to shake the feeling of what might have been in Cardiff.

Yes, they would have been underdogs against Gennaro Gattuso’s Italy, but they would still have had a rousing rendition of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and Dafydd Iwan’s iconic Yma o Hyd to stir the soul. Who knows where that feverish atmosphere could have taken them? After all, Bosnia showed what was possible.

Instead, the Northern Ireland game felt listless, and there was a peculiar atmosphere around the Cardiff City Stadium, with plenty of empty seats. In one corner of the ground, around 300 Northern Ireland fans made the journey, some of whom braved the cold and went topless when their side opened the scoring through Jamie Donley.

For most onlookers, having to play is bewildering. “It is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, it’s pointless,” former Northern Ireland international Chris Brunt told BBC Sportsound before the match.

Gruff John, 35, had travelled down from Y Felinheli, North Wales, with his family on Thursday to attend the two matches.

“Obviously gutted,” he said. “My son, who is 13, he’s gutted as well. More so because we have to watch a dead rubber, and the heartbreak of not going to the World Cup. Wales probably don’t want to play it, Northern Ireland don’t want to play it. It’s not what we wanted to go and watch.”

For Wales fans, Thursday night’s penalty shootout loss had prompted a dismally familiar sense of deja vu. Two years ago, Wales lost in a shootout, to Poland, which meant they missed out on Euro 2024.

“It just feels like quite a big hit for Wales because we’ve had two playoffs now for major tournaments and we’ve lost both on penalties,” said Evans, 24, who lives in Cardiff.

“There was a bit of nervousness about everybody,” added Collins, a 62-year-old postman. “Because of the Poland game and that, it was like, ‘Oh, are we going to lose again?’”

Collins, from Porthmadog, North Wales, has attended 121 away matches with Wales and only missed eight home games in 40 years. He decided to swerve the Northern Ireland match.

Wales’ failure to add to their previous two appearances at a World Cup, in 1958 and 2022, makes some fans wonder when they will return.

“There’s a general feeling that the Bale generation, the Euro 2016 generation, is truly over,” Evans said. “There’s no one to get Wales out of a tight spot in the way that he could.”

Around the ground on Tuesday night, Wales fans are still generally supportive of head coach Craig Bellamy, who has brought a change in style from predecessor Robert Page’s pragmatism, although his substitutions were questioned on Thursday.

The general consensus is Wales lack strength in depth and keenly felt the absences of Ben Davies and Kieffer Moore through injury against Bosnia.

Northern Ireland, for their part, were always facing an uphill battle against Italy in their playoff semi-final, and so it proved, losing 2-0 in Bergamo. They are still chasing their fourth appearance at a World Cup, having last qualified in 1986.

Before the Wales friendly, the IFA offered their supporters a one-off refund “in recognition of your continued support”, which helped soften the blow of that defeat.

Their fans were glad they put up a fight against Italy — they were goalless at half-time, only to concede twice under sustained pressure in the second period. “We’re all very proud of our team because we recognise that we have a very young team that’s still learning,” Northern Ireland fans spokesperson Gary McAllister said.

Many fans did not have sufficient time to plot their route to Cardiff, even if they did wish to attend, which contributed to the subdued atmosphere. The biggest talking point came before the game: it concerned Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill, who was hired as Blackburn Rovers’ head coach in February, on a short-term deal until the end of the season.

With Blackburn mired in a relegation battle, the EFL confirmed to The Athletic they had been contacted by at least one club over a possible conflict of interest. A number of players in O’Neill’s squad play for clubs competing with Blackburn to stay in the Championship.

That includes four players at Oxford United, who are 23rd in the division. Two Oxford players, Ciaron Brown and Donley, started against Wales, as did Portsmouth’s Terry Devlin and West Bromwich Albion’s Isaac Price.

It fuelled mutterings of conspiracy among fans on social media, but O’Neill vehemently denied any such thing to reporters after the game.

“It’s disappointing, given that I’ve managed over 100 international games, and I’ve always put the players first,” O’Neill said. “If you look at the players in question, Isaac played 45 minutes tonight. Ciaron played 60. Jamie played 60. Jamie McDonnell didn’t play, Terry played a little bit more, but he didn’t finish both games. I’ll always try to protect players. I don’t want the players coming here and it affecting their club situation.”

In truth, no player in Cardiff — for either side — was showing huge urgency. Wales, in particular, struggled to find any fluency. As Bellamy put it with typical bluntness in his post-match press conference: “We were s*** first half.”

There was, however, an improvement in the second half, following Sorba Thomas’ goal.

“I thought the ones (fans) who were there were top and there were more of them than I expected,” Bellamy added. “I know we don’t like disappointments, we don’t handle it. I am Welsh, I know what it does. It’s a just shame it wasn’t a final.”

For both countries, attention now turns to the Nations League, which starts in September. Beyond that, and far more importantly, there’s Euro 2028, co-hosted by England, Wales, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland.

As a host nation, Wales do not automatically qualify, but they will expect to, especially as UEFA have reserved two spots for the best-ranked host nations that don’t qualify in the group stage.

For now, however, there is just one silver lining, given the crippling expense this summer’s competition is likely to incur for fans.

“A lot of Wales fans are saying, ‘Well, at least we’re going to save five or six grand’,” jokes Collins.

Click here to read article