Wales v Belarus Competition - World Cup Qualifiers Venue - Cardiff City Stadium Date - 13 November 2021 Kick off - 7.45pm Wales go into their match against Belarus knowing that they are ‘officially’ guaranteed at least a place in the World Cup play-offs after Spain beat Greece 1-0 on Thursday evening. Wales had started their qualifying campaign knowing they had all but secured a play-off spot having won their Nations League group. Spain's win in Athens formally seals it, even if Wales finish outside the top two in their qualifying group. However, Wales must finish second to have any chance of being seeded for March's play-offs. Teams who reach the play-offs via the Nations League are unseeded and will be away in their semi-final to a seeded nation. Wales can guarantee a top-two finish with four points from their final two qualifiers at home to Belarus on Saturday and Belgium on Tuesday. Wales could theoretically even qualify automatically - they are five points behind Group E leaders Belgium with two games to go - but they would need the world's number one ranked side Belgium to lose to Estonia as well as to Rob Page's men in Cardiff, and in reality that is unlikely to happen. On Saturday evening, Gareth Bale - arguably the best Welsh player since John Charles - could make his 100th appearance for his country: just the second Welshman to achieve that milestone after Chris Gunter. Stand-in Wales Manager, Rob Page, has selected the following squad: Wayne Hennessey, Daniel Ward, Adam Davies, Chris Gunter, Ben Davies, Connor Roberts, Chris Mepham, Joe Rodon, Neco Williams, James Lawrence, Rhys Norrington-Davies, Aaron Ramsey, Joe Allen, Jonny Williams, Ethan Ampadu, Harry Wilson, Joe Morrell, Will Vaulks, Sorba Thomas, Daniel James, Gareth Bale, Kieffer Moore, Tyler Roberts, Brennan Johnson, Rubin Colwill, Mark Harris. 2 players have withdrawn from the squad, Dylan Levitt and Ben Cabango - midfielder Levitt is injured, while defender Cabango has withdrawn for personal reasons. No replacements have been announced for the pair, with Wales still having 26 players in their squad. When the teams met in September, Wales ran out 3-2 winners thanks to a hat-trick by Gareth Bale. Turning to Saturday evening, I think that Wales will run out 2-0 winners
Should be a straightforward win but this is Page's Wales we're talking about. Hopefully not too much of a struggle.
Some interesting scores tonight. Italy 0 Switzerland 1. That could mean big problems for Italy. Now 1-1 as I'm typing. England 4 Albania 0 after 30 mins Andorra had a player sent off after 1 minute.
Some crunch games coming up on Sunday. Portugal v Serbia Spain v Sweden Russia v Croatia All group deciders.
COME ON WALES !!! A victory by 2 goals at least would be nice, but I can see it being tight as usual. We seem to adjust our level of performance based on the opposition - ie we play poorly against lower ranked teams but much better against the higher ranked.
France, Belgium and Netherlands should seal automatic qualification tonight, all winning at the moment
Can't fault that result - biggest win for a while. We'll need at least a draw against Belgium to take second though. I hope we can do it - I still think whilst Belgium are a good team, they are very overrated and not the number 1 team in the world as the rankings would have you believe. Now that they have qualified, I hope they will take their foot off the pedal a little. I'm sure there'll be a few club managers getting in touch with Martinez to pressure them into resting players as soon as possible.
