As Chris Coleman reflected on a summer when he admitted his head had been turned by the prospect of a job in the Premier League, the Wales manager cast his mind back to those extraordinary scenes in Cardiff after Euro 2016 when more than 200,000 people lined the streets to welcome the team home and spoke about how his “desperation” to experience more of the same had fuelled his desire to stay.
Hull City’s interest in offering the 46-year-old a route back into club management at the highest level was given serious consideration, yet no matter what stance the Football Association of Wales had taken – the governing body knocked back Hull’s approach – Coleman gave the impression the pull of managing the national side would have been too strong to give up.
Speaking candidly and passionately on the eve of Wales’s opening 2018 World Cup qualifying match against Moldova in Cardiff on Monday, Coleman insisted his enthusiasm was as strong as ever and sounded hell-bent on doing everything in his power to guide the country to the finals in Russia, after which he intends to step down as manager come what may.
“In my industry, if somebody comes calling, especially in the Premier League, then of course you do get your head turned a little bit,” he said. “But the overriding factor for me was trying to qualify again and go to a major tournament – I’ve still got the hunger and desire for that, almost a desperation to do it again, having witnessed the scenes in the summer. I’d have to use that word ‘desperate’ to make sure that we do it again or give it our best shot.
“I said after [Euro 2016] that this will be my last campaign. One more is enough for me. But at the moment, sitting here, it’s not enough. I want some more. I want some more campaign football and I want some more tournament football. I want to make sure that we do what we did in the last campaign.”
He added: “The European Championship, what happened was way beyond mine or any of our dreams. It was an incredible experience. If you are a club manager and things are going well, it’s a great feeling because you’ve got the whole city behind you. If you’re manager of your country and it’s going well, and you’ve got a whole nation proud of you – I can’t describe how that feels.
“I’ve also been on the other side, where the whole nation is not very happy with you, and you just want to stay in your house. So I witnessed that first. But that’s where all our togetherness came from. You can’t manufacture team spirit; it doesn’t come from having a good night out and a laugh. It comes from going through tough times together and coming out the back end, and that’s what we’ve done.”
One thing Coleman does not expect is any sort of hangover from their success at the European Championship. The importance of that was conveyed to the players on the first day they reported back. The Wales captain, Ashley Williams, said: “We got together and had a video about the Euros, just to relive a couple of those memories and relive what it was like. It was important to acknowledge what we did and it was also important to put that to bed a little bit – use the experience of it and move on.”
Coleman also knows the qualification campaign will be different this time. He made the point that Wales, on the back of reaching the semi-finals at Euro 2016, are now seen as a scalp. They are the top seeds in Group D, ranked 11th in the world and the manager expects opponents to be much more cautious in their approach as a result, especially in the home fixtures, where Wales may need to be patient when it comes to breaking down teams.
Moldova should be obliging opponents for a side with Wales’s ambitions. They are ranked 165th in the world, sandwiched between Papua New Guinea and Belize, and picked up only two points out of a possible 30 in their Euro 2016 qualification campaign. Yet there are a couple of cautionary tales for Wales that Coleman knows well.
Coleman played in the Wales team who suffered the ignominy of a 3-2 defeat against Moldova in 1994, not long after the country had established its independence following the break-up of the Soviet Union. The manager was also quick to bring up the Andorra match at the start of the qualifying campaign for Euro 2016, when Gareth Bale scored a late winner to spare Wales the embarrassment of what would have been a humiliating draw.
Realistically, though, Wales should have no problems against Moldova. The real tests, against Austria, Serbia and the Republic of Ireland, lie ahead.
“This is a tough group for us for different reasons,” Coleman said. “But it’s doable if we can get our heads around it and make sure we’re highly focused. If we remain like that, we’ve got a really good chance again to be fighting for something special.”
