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Toshack's Second Chance with Wales

World Cup 2006
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Friendly International: Wales 2:0 Hungary

Sean O'Conor

On Wednesday evening, Wales' new coach John Toshack set out to disprove two old adages; one that you never get a second chance in life and two that you should never go back.

Just over a decade ago the former Liverpool man, who had formed a famous strike partnership with Kevin Keegan at Anfield in the 1970s and who had represented the country of his birth forty times was finally invited to coach his national team.

For a Welsh coach this would normally mean the pinnacle of one's career, but for a man who had already coached Real Madrid amongst sides from six European countries, overseeing the national team of a country still dominated by rugby, with a population of only three million to draw from and with a woeful international record cannot have been that tempting.

But despite his continental assimilation, Toshack remained at heart a Welshman and as the outstanding homegrown coach of his generation, had been a target of the Football Association of Wales for some time, his wage expectations being the one persistent stumbling block.

In 1994 the FAW got around this by allowing Toshack to remain manager of Real Sociedad in Spain whilst coaching Wales on a part-time basis. All parties seemed happy and the expectant fans at Ninian Park, Cardiff got ready for a new era of Welsh football on a crisp March night eleven years ago.

Wales had failed to qualify for a major tournament since 1958 (when they reached the World Cup quarter-final) and had just heartbreakingly missed out on USA '94 thanks to a Paul Bodin penalty hitting the crossbar against a Hagi-inspired Romania in their final group game.

Toshack had signalled his ambitions before the Norway game kicked off, bravely installing a sweeper system that was standard to those like himself schooled in European football but that was still not the formation of choice for British footballers drilled in the virtues of 4-4-2. It was a disaster. Against a useful but hardly world-beating Norwegian side Wales crumbled to a 3-1 defeat with the players bewildered by Toshack's tactics and comprehensively bested in all areas of the field.

"A truly dreadful Wales" commented Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport and that was one of the more charitable comments. Toshack, well used to the notorious expectations of the Spanish press, was truly taken aback at being booed off by his own fans and being slaughtered so mercilessly by the press when he believed he had every right to experiment in what was after all his first friendly match in charge.

With the criticism still ringing in his ears he sensationally tended his resignation. The natural man for the job, whom the fans and national association had desired for so long, had departed almost before he had begun, seemingly for good. Welsh football's happy dawn had at once become a nightmare.

But football, as they say, is a funny old game and eleven years on and with much water having flowed under the bridge, the FAW came calling again. This time the circumstances were more favourable. In the period since Toshack's brief stab at the job, Wales had huffed and puffed but continued to fail narrowly to qualify for a major tournament.

Their able and popular coach Mark Hughes had been lured away by Premiership Blackburn Rovers and in his wake a number of senior players including captain Gary Speed announced they had had enough. Fan expectations had been brought back down to earth again. For his part, Toshack was out of a job in Spain and so was happy to give Wales another shot. Meanwhile, Wales' poor start to their 2006 World Cup qualifying group that makes the 2008 European Championship their next realistic target gives him breathing space.

Despite a glorious competitive upset here and there, such as a 1-0 win over World Champions Germany in 1991 and a 2-1 win over Italy last year, the Welsh national team story has been a catalogue of depressing near misses, continuing agonisingly with a Euro 2004 campaign that saw them win their first four games, including the defeat of Italy, before finally succumbing to Russia in a two-legged play-off.

That qualifying campaign saw Cardiff's fabulous 72,000 seat Millennium Stadium a near permanent sell-out, making little Wales the best-supported national team in Europe! For Wednesday's match, a mere 16,672 had turned up but the big crowds will return if Toshack gets into his stride. For a country with such meagre football resources, it will take an exceptional motivator and tactician to end Wales' fifty years of hurt.

And Toshack is refreshingly realistic: "I make no apologies for saying I have one eye on the month of September 2006 when the next European Championship qualifiers begin," he admitted in the match programme.

But so far, so good. In a side boasting only two Premiership players, Wales comfortably won 2-0 against a Hungary side forever in the shadow of the Mighty Magyars of the 1950s and now coached by German World Cup winner Lothar Matthaus.

Toshack started with a sweeper system again but this time it worked. Bad-boy Craig Bellamy, whose TV spat with Newcastle boss Graeme Souness had seen him exiled north of the border to Glasgow Celtic, began his road to redemption with a brace of second-half strikes. "Football's a game of highs and lows and I seem to get more lows than highs but tonight was a high," he said after the match.

In the coming games Bellamy will be one of Toshack's main assets, along with Spurs' energetic 24-year-old attacking midfielder Simon Davies, West Brom creator Jason Koumas and Cardiff's elegant centre-back Danny Gabbidon, who is surely Premiership-bound. Add to that the experience of Celtic's John Hartson and, of course, Manchester United's Ryan Giggs.

A winning start and a 100% record for Toshack therefore but a man of his experience is under no illusions, "One swallow doesn't make a summer," he reminded the press pack after the final whistle, and exuding a footballing wisdom accrued from a lifetime's journey to and from Cardiff via Anfield and the Bernabeu added, "Experience tells me we may have to take one step back to go two steps forward and I've always said what I learn from the game is more important than the result."

Wales 2:0 Hungary
Millennium Stadium, Cardiff
Wed 9th Feb 2005
Att: 16,672
Scorers: Bellamy 63, 80

Wales: Coyne (Burnley), Edwards (Wolves), Gabbidon (Cardiff), Page (Cardiff), Partridge (Motherwell), Ricketts (Swansea), Davies (Tottenham), Robinson (Sunderland), Fletcher (West Ham), Earnshaw (West Brom), Bellamy (Celtic); subs: Weston (Cardiff) for Edwards 60, G. Roberts (Tranmere) for Earnshaw 74, S Roberts (Wrexham) for Robinson 90, Collins (Sunderland) for Partridge 66.

Hungary: Kiraly (Crystal Palace), Bodmar (Roda), Gyepes (Ferencvaros), Dragoner (Guimares), Juhasz (MTK), Korsos (Rapid Wien), Lipcesi (Ferencvaros), Hajnal (St Truiden), Huszti (Ferencvaros), Torghelle (Crystal Palace), Gera (West Brom); subs: Vincze (Gyon) for Gyepes 80, Kovacs (Viking) for Lipcesi 68, Rosa (Ferencvaros) for Korsos 65, Leandro (Ferencvaros) for Hajnal 58, Kenesi (Gyon) for Torghelle 80.

Sean O'Conor