HERE’S a thought: Scrap the Carling Cup and organise a new four-nations tournament between Wales, the Faroe Islands, San Marino and Liechtenstein.
Don’t laugh, because this is where we’re at, having this week had to endure a rumbling story about our battle with the Faroes for a Pot Five seeding in the 2014 World Cup draw.
If it wasn’t true it would be laughable. Instead, it is a situation that demeans Wales as a footballing nation.
Apparently, we’re level pegging at 123rd in the Fifa rankings with an outpost close to Iceland that is home to a population smaller than the town of Barry.
Brian Kerr, the former Republic of Ireland boss, now in charge of the Faroe Islands, says he cannot believe this is the case considering the difference in standard of player available to Wales.
I’m sure he’s right on that front, but you know what, if we played them tomorrow I wouldn’t put any money on us beating them, Aaron Ramsey or no Aaron Ramsey.
Because I believe the Wales football team is as close to being in terminal decline as it has ever been.
I’m no historian of the game, but name me a time, post-war, when our fortunes have been at quite as low an ebb as this?
Personally, I can only recall one period where I came close to being in such despair.
I think it was when Mike Smith took over for his second spell in charge of the national team after John Toshack had walked out, having been appointed after Terry Yorath.
A 5-0 thrashing at the hands of Georgia sticks out, but at least then we still had the respect of our European neighbours, having gone within a whisker of reaching the finals of USA ‘94.
No longer though. The pasting we took at the hands of England back in March – 2-0 going on 20-0 – triggered a glut of patronising quotes from English pundits about the futility of valuing any victory against such a weak Wales outfit.
That result was just one instalment of what has been a miserable start to Gary Speed’s time in charge. For goodness sake, where has the impact any been that a new manager should have on his charges?
All I’ve seen in the four matches he’s presided over so far is the same jumbled mess that I’ve come to see as synonymous with the national team. If Roman Abramovich were chief executive of the FAW he’d have gone already.
Stalin would probably have shot him.
Either side of that England debacle were dismal defeats against Scotland and the Republic in that wretched Mickey Mouse Carling Cup thing. Wales did get a 2-0 win last time out against a bunch of Northern Ireland kids, but we needed to see more than that in Speed’s first few months in charge. Much, much more.
Perhaps on this evidence it’s no wonder we’re now bracketed alongside the Faroe Islands; but of graver concern is that no sane person could predict better is on the way.
If Wales do get a Pot Five seeding, then I’d say they have a 0.01% chance of qualifying for Brazil 2014.
If they’re in Pot Six, I think we might as well all retire to a quiet room, draw the curtains and stick on the Leonard Cohen LPs.
Not at the prospect of us failing to make the World Cup, we’re accustomed to that, but at the realisation that once relegated to that sort of status the remedial work Welsh football requires becomes even harder to undertake.
International football is already under threat by the behemoth that the money-drenched club game has become, and it is the smaller nations who will inevitably suffer most because of their lack of clout.
For years I’ve listened to the optimism of colleagues telling me how Bale, Ramsey and Collison will one day terrorise the best in the world.
Well, out of all the matches Wales play in the next five years, I’ll be amazed if those three feature together in 40% of them. Deals will be done with their clubs to excuse them from friendlies, and they will be withdrawn from competitive matches by those same clubs if they so much as suffer a bout of indigestion.
This is why I believe Wales aren’t just enduring a rocky spell, a cyclical fallow period from which recovery is inevitable.
No, the team is trapped in a worsening malaise characterised by poor results, lack of interest among squad members, a manager out of his depth, a well-meaning but amateurish governing body stuck in the dark ages and an unprecedented level of apathy among the general public.
I see no realistic way out of it unless there is some sort of revolution in the Welsh game, triggered by someone with a vision we have not as yet seen in these parts.
Can’t see it though. I think come 2014 there’s only one connection Welsh football is going to have with Brazil. Derek Brazil.
