Football Further

Posts Tagged ‘Aaron Ramsey’

“MARSEILLE — An injury-time goal by substitute Aaron Ramsey gave Arsenal a 1-0 win at Marseille on Wednesday that enabled Arsene Wenger’s side to leapfrog their opponents to top spot in Champions League Group F.”

My AFP match report can be read here.

The qualifying draw for Euro 2012 provided fans of the Welsh national side with hope and fear in roughly equal measure.

Fear because England are one of the best teams in the world, Switzerland have qualified for the last four major tournaments in a row and because their group is statistically the tightest in terms of world rankings out of all eight qualifying pools. Hope because, although top spot is out of the question, Switzerland are a far from terrifying prospect, Bulgaria are not the side they once were and Montenegro – despite boasting the mouth-watering pairing of Mirko Vučinić and Stevan Jovetić in attack – picked up just a single victory (over Georgia) in their World Cup qualifying campaign.

Hope also because, thanks to the emergence of a glut of exciting young players, Wales are approaching a qualifying tournament with more than the usual familiar blend of outright dread and trepidation. “If Wales have those aspirations [to qualify] then they need to be beating the likes of Switzerland, Bulgaria and Montenegro, certainly at home, and getting something on their travels,” said former skipper Gary Speed this week.

The task now confronting coach John Toshack is to combine the resources at his disposal into a team capable of mounting a sustained challenge for a qualification berth. His attempt to do so during Wales’s ill-fated bid to reach the 2010 World Cup was an almost unqualified failure.

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