Before meeting with Bosnia and Herzegovina, head coach has urged his players to step up and embrace the occasion
“Have you ever seen Usain Bolt in the 100m?” Craig Bellamy asks a crowd of journalists in the Wynnstay auditorium at Wales’s hub in Hensol, on the eve of the World Cup playoff semi-final against Bosnia and Herzegovina. “He’s smiling, waving – all right, it does help he knows he can run at 60% to win – but he has discovered the art of being relaxed and calm to be able to run at his best speed. If you’re tense, you’re fighting yourself.”
Bellamy has been there as a player but as a head coach, while intense and fiercely driven, he believes cool heads will prevail at the Cardiff City Stadium on Thursday and, if they get the right result, in the playoff final at the same venue five days later. It is a message he has relayed in each session, every conversation, since his squad gathered on Sunday. “We all want something, but the more you want something, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get it,” he says. “In sport, I dislike the word ‘pressure’. It is a privilege to be where we are now. Why wouldn’t you enjoy this? If you can’t enjoy this and you only feel pressure, you ain’t made for elite sport. You put that on your shoulders, it gets you nowhere.”
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