Can Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey shoot Wales to World Cup?
- Article published prior to Wales' World Cup play-off with Austria
The last goal in a World Cup game involving Wales was scored by Pele. It was the first a 17-year-old scored on the global stage.
If the rest is history for a footballer widely described as the game’s greatest, Wales have not returned to the world stage in the subsequent 64 years.
That may change now. They face Austria on Thursday, with the reward a play-off final against Scotland or Ukraine in June.
Wales qualified for the 1958 World Cup with the aid of prolific winger who gained an indelible association with Tottenham - Cliff Jones. They may hope for some similarities with the past, given Gareth Bale’s importance.
Just how crucial is Bale for Wales?
Wales’ record scorer is also their highest in major tournaments, with three, all in Euro 2016. Bale was both Wales’ top scorer and assister in their group and even if his three goals all came in a hat-trick against Belarus, he ended the pool stage with an average of 1.36 goals and assists per 90 minutes.
He has been directly involved in 42 percent of Wales’ goals.
It is not quite as dramatic as Bale’s efforts in propelling Wales to Euro 2016, their first tournament for 58 years. They scored 11 goals in qualifying. He got seven of them and created two more. Yet if that was a player at his peak, his impact was still apparent last summer.
He failed to score in Euro 2020, in part because of a ballooned penalty against Turkey. But he ended the tournament with two assists and an expected assists (xA) of 1.8. It was the fifth highest, behind only Kevin De Bruyne, Ruslan Malinovskyi, Donyell Malen and Dani Olmo.
Bale’s xA per 90 minutes of 0.39 put him eighth and, of the seven above him, all played for Belgium, Spain, England, Sweden or the Netherlands.
Bale’s overall xG (expected goals) + xA of 0.85 per 90 minutes was aided by that penalty, but good enough to put him 10th in a chart topped by Cristiano Ronaldo (1.50).
He was just above Karim Benzema and De Bruyne. Take away spot kicks and his 0.66 puts him just behind Kylian Mbappe and still ahead of Benzema and Robert Lewandowski (both 0.65).
There was a sizeable drop from Bale to the next Wales player, Aaron Ramsey, with a combined xG and xA of 0.49. Indeed, Daniel James (0.15) had the next highest expected assists per 90 minutes.
Bale mustered the most shot-creating actions for Wales, with 13. He had three dribbles that led to a shot, a total bettered only by Sweden’s Alexander Isak and Spain’s Mikel Oyarzabal in the whole tournament.
Even with the emergence of younger players like James, two old-timers have the greatest pedigree. Ramsey ended Euro 2016 with the joint most assists (four) with Eden Hazard. His return of 0.81 xA per 90 was a fraction behind the Belgian’s 0.82.
If part of the question with each is whether he can return to the form of the past, it also revolves around fitness and sharpness. Bale has only played 267 minutes in La Liga and four in the Champions League this season; only 78 of them were since August.
Ramsey scored a belated first club goal of the campaign in Rangers’ win over Dundee on Sunday. He has been busier than Bale, but not by much: four minutes in the Europa League for Rangers, 14 in the Champions League for Juventus, 97 in Serie A, 114 in the Scottish Premiership.
The club competition in which he has featured for longest is the Scottish Cup (140 minutes). He has been on the pitch for longer in World Cup qualifiers than the Italian and Scottish leagues and the Champions and Europa Leagues combined.
Each has the potential to be decisive. Partly because they were in a group without a minnow and with only five teams, Wales were not prolific in qualifying. They scored eight goals over two games against Belarus but only six in their remaining six matches.
It has tended to be their way. They were the lowest scorers of the teams who qualified for Euro 2020, with 10, and the joint lowest of those who reached Euro 2016, with 11.
If it reflects the lack of a high-class striker, it means every goal can assume an added importance.
Two men are likeliest to provide, the first and sixth highest scorers for Wales ever.
Between them, Bale and Ramsey have 56 international goals. The rest of Robert Page’s squad – and Kieffer Moore is absent due to injury – have 19 between them, one short of Ramsey’s individual haul.
But then the last time Wales won a World Cup play-off, against Israel in February 1958, it was with goals from Ivor Allchurch and Cliff Jones. Six decades on, they still rank in Wales’ all-time top 10 scorers.
Now the task of emulating them may fall to their modern-day equivalents.
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