{"id":30731,"date":"2025-06-10T11:57:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T11:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/world-cup-qualifying-wow-how-pundits-reacted-to-wales-belgium-thriller\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T11:57:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T11:57:03","slug":"world-cup-qualifying-wow-how-pundits-reacted-to-wales-belgium-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/world-cup-qualifying-wow-how-pundits-reacted-to-wales-belgium-thriller\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup qualifying: &#8216;Wow&#8217; &#8211; How pundits reacted to Wales&#8217; Belgium thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fulham&#8217;s Wilson started the comeback with a penalty just before the break in Brussels, his sixth goal in eight appearances under Bellamy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And ex-Wales frontman Rob Earnshaw believes the 28-year-old is among a clutch of players who have fully stepped up to the plate under the new regime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The likes of Harry Wilson, he&#8217;s probably the stand out where I&#8217;ve seen him grow into a real man, in a sense, into a real top football player,&#8221; Earnshaw told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/programmes\/b0070htg\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Adding goals and assists, he got a goal last night. He&#8217;s thriving. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But then I look around and I see the likes of Sorba Thomas, he got an assist the other night [against Liechtenstein] and a goal [against Belgium].<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;David Brooks, he&#8217;s had his troubles over the last few years but he loves playing for Wales, you can see the energy. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s a real sense that anybody in the team has got a chance and players are thriving &#8211; I love to see it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having relied heavily on the astonishing talent of talisman Gareth Bale in the past, Vokes believes Wales have, over time, managed to build a group littered with experience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;What we do have in the group, players like [Ethan] Ampadu and Wilson that have played a lot of games and they&#8217;ve got that experience,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We do have a group that have kind of grown up together.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At 3-0 down after just 27 minutes following goals from Romelu Lukaku, Youri Tielemans and Jeremy Doku, all hope had appeared lost for Wales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Earnshaw believes Bellamy&#8217;s Wales can take a huge amount from the defeat in Brussels given their remarkable fightback.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We know Belgium are good and Wales were given no chance, especially being 3-0 down,&#8221; he explained.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But what I did love was that, I think what this new Wales has really given us is that we could be 3-0 down, but it&#8217;s not over. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a lot to take, but I&#8217;ve been in dressing rooms where sometimes you lose a game but you learn so much and you feel more confident.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ward added: &#8220;The spirit of that team, they&#8217;re never out of it and they kept going. Even at 3-3 they didn&#8217;t try and settle for that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wales have never come from 3-0 down to win or draw a match, but Roberts could not hide his pride at the way Bellamy&#8217;s side fought back to challenge for a share of the spoils at King Baudouin Stadium.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We were punished for a poor 20 minutes in the first half and we had a mountain to climb after that, but fair play to the players, they climbed it,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was heart-breaking in the end because the effort the players put in to lift themselves from nowhere to get back level was unbelievable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cd7g9yndrp8o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fulham&#8217;s Wilson started the comeback with a penalty just before the break in Brussels, his sixth goal in eight appearances under Bellamy. And ex-Wales frontman Rob Earnshaw believes the 28-year-old is among a clutch of players who have fully stepped up to the plate under the new regime. &#8220;The likes of Harry Wilson, he&#8217;s probably [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[10428,805,10469,3002,10470,5364,312,510,10468],"class_list":["post-30731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wales","tag-belgium","tag-cup","tag-pundits","tag-qualifying","tag-reacted","tag-thriller","tag-wales","tag-world","tag-wow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30733,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30731\/revisions\/30733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}