Craig Bellamy: How obsessive, formidable head coach modified Wales

On the pitch, it took less than a minute for Bellamy to demonstrate how he had transformed Wales.

Within seconds of kick-off in his opening game, last September’s Nations League match at home to Turkey, it was abundantly clear that things were going to be different.

Players were taking up new positions and changing them fluidly, building play from all areas of the field and, whenever possession was lost, they launched into a rapid – but organised, collective – press to win it back as quickly as possible.

Turkey, Euro 2024 quarter-finalists just a few months earlier, were outplayed, and fortunate to escape with a goalless draw.

Wales fans could scarcely recognise their team from the one which had been held by Gibraltar and thrashed by Slovakia that summer.

Bellamy boldly declared afterwards “this is the worst we’re going to be”, having instigated this transformation with less than a week’s training.

Players were instantly impressed by the level of detail in Bellamy’s team meetings and struck by how different – and meticulous – his tactical approach was to his predecessors.

“He’s definitely changed the way I see football,” says Harry Wilson, Wales’ top scorer – and arguably their best player – under Bellamy. “I watch games differently now, the way he sees it.”

Bellamy presented some of these ideas to coaches studying for their Uefa qualifications with the FAW last month. The enormous, packed conference room at the Celtic Manor hotel was silent as World Cup and Champions League winners hung on his every word.

Bellamy is a football obsessive who is in his element when discussing tactical trends or influential coaches and teams of the past.

He is a great admirer of Pep Guardiola – but quick to note he is “not a little Pep” – while he often refers to the valuable lessons he learnt while playing under Sir Bobby Robson.

The Guardiola effect is illustrated by Bellamy’s appointment of the Manchester City manager’s former analyst, Piet Cremers, as an assistant coach with Wales.

Bellamy worked with Cremers as part of Vincent Kompany’s staff at Burnley, and he credits the ex-City captain who now manages Bayern Munich as one of the important figures in his coaching career, having also served as his assistant at Anderlecht.

Fiercely independent, Bellamy knows his own mind, though his outlook is informed by rich experiences of working with some of the game’s brightest thinkers.

It is why he rejects talk of being an underdog, or of Wales being a small football nation punching above its weight.

Bellamy believes – and wants everyone else to believe – that this is a country that warrants its place at the sport’s top table, given the regularity with which the team has qualified for major tournaments in recent years.

The head coach and his players set out to win every game, no matter who they are playing, and that ambitious mindset has permeated through the FAW at all levels.

Bellamy knows what elite football looks like – during matches, in training, all aspects on and off the field – and he is instilling those standards in his Wales team.