Northern Ireland<\/a>,\u201d said Bellamy at the Wales squad announcement.<\/p>\n\u201cThis team do not play with the ball, they don\u2019t want the ball, so Italy having the ball is not a problem to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you haven\u2019t qualified for two major tournaments as a top team like they are, just imagine the pressure Italy are going to be under. I am going to be so intrigued as a football fan to see how they handle that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we take care of Bosnia, and that\u2019s a big if because they are a top team, it wouldn\u2019t surprise me whichever team we faced.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wales and Northern Ireland both made their World Cup debuts in 1958 with the Irish squad returning to the finals in 1982 and 1986. Wales didn\u2019t make their second appearance until Qatar four years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to do your homework and I\u2019ve watch both Italy and Northen Ireland. They are two completely different teams, so how we would plan to meet Italy would be different in structure to facing Northern Ireland,\u201d continued Bellamy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBosnia play a little bit similar to Italy in their structure without the ball, even though the Italians can switch. We might be able to use some of our Bosnia groundwork if we played Italy, but if it\u2019s Northern Ireland they press in a completely different way.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur structure of work is already planned and already ahead because we don\u2019t have time and we must be ready to hit the ground running as soon as the first game is ticked off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wales’s injury list includes Ben Davies, Keiffer Moore and Chris Mepham, but will have the very much in-form Fulham star Harry Wilson, a hat-trick scorer in the 7-1 final pool win over North Macedonia in their last outing in November, fit to play next week.<\/p>\n
When the draw for the qualifiers was made Bellamy warned everyone not to write off O\u2019Neill\u2019s team and claimed they were \u201cthe one team I didn\u2019t want to play\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone’s writing them off but I\u2019m telling you now, watch out for that result – it’s not going to be straightforward. It will be a tough, tough game for Italy,\u201d Bellamy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDown the years they’ve just had something and they know what they are. They\u2019ve got a brilliant manager who I really, really like.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was lucky enough to spend a bit of time with him as well, and I loved him. And no wonder his players do as well. They won\u2019t be playing at their home ground, but I just feel they\u2019ll be comfortable in any situation you throw them into.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I was Italy going into that game, with everyone expecting you to win, I’m telling you I’d be edgy. I wouldn\u2019t be comfortable with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cItaly is one of the greatest nations in football and that’s a lot of responsibility to shoulder. To have to play a team like Northern Ireland I’d just be thinking \u2018let\u2019s get through this and see what happens in the other game’.\u201d<\/p>\n
Click here to sign up to our sport newsletter, bringing you the latest sports news, headlines and top stories<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wales boss was dismissing the idea that if his side beats Bosnia in their World Cup play-off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[2199,31133,1144,8538,16,15],"class_list":["post-833489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-italy","tag-michael-oneill","tag-northern-ireland","tag-northern-ireland-football-team","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116248998662526080","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Craig](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0_01KKXRSNY7T9E665REGKT2P2KQ.jpg\")
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