Wales to use successes and setbacks to drive them on – Bale

By Dan Cope

WALES superstar Gareth Bale believes that his team will use the euphoria of their magical Euro 2016 run as well as their failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup as inspiration to qualify for Euro 2020.

The Real Madrid winger, who missed Wales’ loss to the Republic of Ireland that ended their World Cup hopes, said that Wales can use both events “to their advantage.”

Bale said: “We’ve got the euphoria of qualifying for the first Euros and of doing so well at that competition and we want to do that again. We’ve also got the negatives of knowing how it feels to miss out on a tournament, like we did with the World Cup so we’re going to use both of them to our advantage.”

He added: “We’re going to be using all our experience to navigate through the game tomorrow (against Hungary) and give 100% like we always do.”

Bale, who played a key role in Wales’ Euro 2016 success, scoring 3 goals, is now one of the veterans in Wales’ youthful looking squad also said he will give the younger players “words of wisdom” prior to their all important Tuesday night qualifying game against Hungary.

Bale said: “I’m sure that come tomorrow’s game, we’ll be speaking to the more inexperienced guys, giving them words of wisdom and just giving them our experience because we know how to do it because we’ve done it before.”

With Wales playing their most important game since 2018’s fixture against Republic of Ireland, they will be relying on their key players to put in big performances and have been boosted by the return of both Bale and fellow Welsh star Aaron Ramsey following injury lay offs

Both players appeared in Wales’ 2-0 victory over Azerbaijan in Baku on Saturday evening with Bale playing for an hour and Ramsey playing his first game for Wales since 2018. Despite being troubled by injury, Bale isn’t concerned about his own fitness.

He said: “I’m ready. I haven’t played in four weeks so it is important to get 60 minutes into my legs and to get some match sharpness.”

He added: “We (Bale and Giggs) spoke at the start of the week about trying to get 50 minutes and hopefully being a couple (of goals) up before I came off so it worked out well, there are no problems and I’m ready to go for Tuesday.”

Bale also believes that qualifying for Euro 2020 would be on of his proudest career achievements.

The four time champions league winner said: “The experience of qualifying for Euros was massive and do something I’ve never done before and to do it again might be a bit more impressive.”

He added: “It would be right up there again.”