By Richard Early
Wales manager, Jayne Ludlow, praised her side’s battling spirit to bag a late winning goal and seal another three points in their FIFA Women’s World Cup qualifying campaign.
The 1-0 victory over Kazakhstan keeps the Red Army top of Group 1 after three matches. They are a point ahead of England, who have a game in hand.
“We created chances,” Ludlow said. “There are areas we need to develop going forward but we knew that. The fact that we created so many chances and weren’t taking them was disappointing as the game went on.
“But the game is 90 minutes long, and at the end of the day one goal won the game for us, and sitting where we are now with two wins and a draw is fantastic for us as a group.
“We weren’t the underdogs today, and when you work in these environments it’s a different kind of feeling for the players and the group of staff.
“The players probably coped better than the staff in that sense, they were calm and they kept doing the things that would get them the result, which was great because it means that we are one group. It was nice to see that from the side of the pitch, it was nice to see that they’re prepared to work hard for each other and make big decisions on the pitch too.”
In the build-up to the match Ludlow emphasized the need for the squad to gel together and develop as a unit.
“I think collectively, you look around the team, we have that mix of old and young and we had somebody making their debut tonight; a 16-year-old (Elise Hughes) in central midfield who just fitted in really well. I’m really pleased for her, and Hayley (Ladd) with her performance too, they all deserve credit.
“I think it’s quite easy to give up when things don’t go your way for that length of time in a game and we didn’t, we kept fighting.”
The gaffer went on to explain the feeling that remaining top of the group gives to the squad.
“It’s not something we talk about because we’re a game ahead of most teams,” Ludlow continued. “It’s a nice feeling, but the three points were the important thing for us so that’s why we’re buzzing at the moment.
“We sit where we’re at. We are a group of females, passionate about what we do and we want to achieve. The other thing that comes into that for us as a team is that we are the spokespeople as well for the female game.
“The gender issue with regards to sport is a massive one; I would love to have more people watching and seeing how these girls are doing. I’ve said before, irrelevant to gender, they have the Welsh badge on their chest and they do their utmost to make sure that our country gets success.”
The 38-year-old praised the atmosphere and support that roared the team on for the full 90 minutes as more than 3,000 fans watched her side claim three points at Cardiff City Stadium.
“I’m really thankful for the people who turned up tonight. They were very loud and it seemed like there were a lot more. In the future if we can keep progressing as we are, we can hopefully have even better crowds.”
England defeated Wales’ next opponents Bosnia and Herzegovina 4-0 at Bescot Stadium tonight. Ludlow revealed her thoughts on Bosnia’s tactics ahead of the game in Zenica on Tuesday.
“We’ll reflect on that game. We’ll get the footage as soon as we can, and start looking at it to see how Bosnia have set up. We’ve been preparing a certain way so we’ll look at that to see if they’ve changed anything.
“Results against the top tier nations, for us, Russia or Bosnia, against those full time, professional teams are what they are. We’re amateur teams against professionals and for Bosnia it is exactly the same. We would have gone there with amateur players against full time professionals, so I’m not sure what the coach’s tactic was. I’m sure it was to defend better than they have probably, but for us that could change on Tuesday because they will want to get points out of us.
“We just deal with the here and now. This is where we are, we know where we’d like to get to and we treat each game as it comes. We’ll have a certain game plan now on Tuesday and hope it’ll go the way that we plan. If it doesn’t work, we have to be adaptable and tonight showed that – that is going to be a massive part of us going forward too.”
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