22nd March 2025
Cardiff City Stadium
Attendance – 32,473
Cymru’s first match of 2025 and the 2026 World Cup Qualifiers took place Saturday night, when Cymru took on Kazakhstan in Cardiff. The seventh stop of the Craig Bellamy honeymoon start of his reign has Cymru manager. The over 32,000 of us there at the Cardiff City Stadium sung the anthem with gusto, singing that seems to get better and more emotional with every game.
The crowd were hoping for a quick start to the scoring and got their wish after 9 minutes, but first they had to watch Cymru try to pass the energy out of the Kazakhstan players early on. But after few breaks by Kazakhstan and an early corner, along with the biting of finger nails of many fans, Cymru made the breakthrough.
David Brooks took a short corner to Conor Roberts, who played the ball out to Dan James on the right wing. James took the ball into the box passing it back to David Brooks whose attempt of a back heel went straight to a defender. Despite Kazakhstan winning the ball back, three defenders failed to clear the ball. Ben Davies got a tackle in and passed it back to Dan James who shot from 7 yards, with the ball taking a deflection before hitting back of the net; sending the crowd wild.
Most of the next 20 minutes was spent on the half way line with the ball being passed between the midfield and Joe Rodon. It was working well (if not great to watch) until the Cymru midfield on the half hour mark lost the ball on the half way line. Kazakhstan got the ball to the corner of the Cymru box where Islam Chesnokov tried to cross the ball. Conor Roberts who stood less than a yard away turned his back to block the ball. Unfortunately, in turning his back it caused his arm to come out. Even though the ball hit his arm from such a short distance, the referee gave a penalty and it was confirmed by VAR many, many minutes later. Askhat Tagybergen took the penalty, sending it straight down the middle. Karl Darlow’s outstretched foot managed to check the ball’s path, but only to see it spin over the line.
The first half ended 1-1, leaving some of the older fans in the crowd thinking that they been here before … drawing in a match that was there for the taking. But this is a different Cymru, with a different manager and more than just a Plan A in the play book.
The second half started with Cymru going for it from the whistle. With a couple of passes back and forth between the centre backs, the ball got out to Neco Williams on the left. He flicked the ball to Sorba Thomas who burst down the left wing and cut inside the box winning a corner. Taking the corner himself, he sent a perfect high ball to the back post, onto the head of the diving captain Ben Davies for his third Cymru goal.
With the crowd more relaxed, the game went back to the earlier pattern, the ball being controlled by the Cymru team on the half way line. The ball spent so much time during the rest of the second half being passed back and forth across that 10 yard patch of grass. Cardiff City might well be thinking they’ll need to relay that part of the pitch before the next match. But this tactic worked, and I would happily swap an entertaining match for a boring guaranteed three points.
The match had settled when the board went up announcing 3 minutes of added time. Mark Harris won the ball 10 yards in the Cymru half, he passed to fellow substitute Jordan James who produced a stunning 30 yard cross field pass to Sorba Thomas. Thomas ran into the box and crossed the ball to the centre of the penalty area, where Rabbi Matondo who had only been on the pitch a couple of minutes, knocked in his first Cymru goal from 5 yards.
The match ended 3-1 with Cymru getting their first win of a World Cup qualifying campaign for only the sixth time. All thoughts are on Tuesday, where Cymru takes on North Macedonia in Skopje. Fans will happily settle down to watch a match hoping that there are no scares and another 3 points, and see Cymru have a 100% 2 game start for the only the third campaign ever.
Words from Stephen @StephenJBaker and photos from Dai, Stephen and Andrew Challis @ChallisMusings