Golden oldie Gareth Bale has vowed to help polish the new gems as Wales aim to sparkle again in the European Championships.
Almost three years after being the jewel in the crown for Chris Coleman’s team at Euro 2016, Bale is still the most precious piece in the new line-up under Ryan Giggs.
But as Wales prepare to take on Slovakia tonight in their opening qualifier for Euro 2020, the Real Madrid star – not yet even 30 – is the self-confessed “oldie” compared to the new crops of youngsters who will provide vital support.
Harry Wilson (22), Dan James (21), David Brooks (21), Ben Woodburn (19), Rabbi Matondo (18) and Tyler Roberts (20) are the new breed – but Bale still spans the generations.
He has been a central part of the Wales set-up since he was a teenager. He still remembers his days as a rookie in the Welsh camp when he stood up and sang Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’ at his initiation ceremony. By his own admission, not very well.
Both he and Wales have come a long way since then and the good news for home fans is that he still has a thirst for more 13 years on and admits he is “raring to go” at the start of another campaign.
The Slovakians will know all about the wonder of Bale having seen him score twice against them in the best. The first of his record 31 goals came against them in 2006 and he scored 10 years later when they met in Bordeaux in the opening game of the Euro 2016 finals.
“I’m ready and raring to go. I’ve scored against them a few times before and I always feel like scoring a goal,” said Bale.
“We know what we need to do and we have set ourselves targets. You want to get off to a good start in any campaign, especially at home. You don’t want to be playing catch-up.
“We are going for top spot in our group – why wouldn’t we? We are going into the group looking to win it.”
“We know we have quite a lot of new players, a lot of youngsters, but we have a lot of experience in the team as well. It’s about us oldies now giving them some advice and helping them along the way,” said Bale.
“Hopefully they will provide that bit of freshness, a bit of legs that maybe we had five or six years ago. I think we are ready, we’ve prepared well and we’ve done all we can.”
Aaron Ramsey will miss Wales’ opening game of their campaign after failing to recover from a thigh injury.
Manager Ryan Giggs was forced to add the name of the influential Arsenal midfielder to an injury list that has already robbed him of the services of Ethan Ampadu, Sam Vokes and Tom Lawrence for a crucial game in Group E.
Both Slovakia and Group favourites Croatia got their campaigns off to a flying start on Thursday night with home wins over Hungary and Azerbaijan. If Wales don’t follow suit, then they will already be playing catch-up with away trips to Croatia and Hungary to follow in June.
“Aaron has gone back to Arsenal, his injury just didn’t clear up in time. It’s obviously a blow, especially given the form he has been in and the quality that Aaron has got,” said Giggs.
“He’s not made it but that gives a chance to someone else. He gave it a try yesterday but it wasn’t settling down as quickly as we thought – it was too short a turnaround.
“Of course you are going to miss someone like Aaron but we prepared for if he didn’t make it as well. We made sure that we had a Plan B, we were working on that during the week, and we had two options.”
Swansea City’s flying winge James or Leeds United’s equally sharp Roberts could now get the chance to fill Ramsey’s No. 10 role. Better news for Giggs is that Bournemouth’s Brooks has recovered from the ankle injury that kept him out of Tuesday night’s 1-0 friendly win over Trinidad & Tobago.
“Brooksy is fully fit and the good thing about him is that for Bournemouth is he’s played on the right, he’s played No10 and he’s played deeper. Like a good player, he can play anywhere really – he’s a talent ,” added Giggs.
“We’ve got a talented group of players and now they need to go on the pitch and show it.”
Giggs showed his players some highlights of the 2016 qualifying campaign to get them in the mood for today. More than anything, he wanted everyone to realise how tough it was to qualify for the first time in 60 years. Now the pressure is on him to deliver in a similar fashion to his predecessor, Chris Coleman.
“It was just a reminder for a lot of players who were there, and a lot of the players who weren’t, of the rewards that you get if you have a successful qualifying campaign,” added Giggs.
“It wasn’t really anything specific, or working on any team, it was just a look back at that and what we need to do, at how difficult it is. If you do get there the rewards are there for all to see.
“We’ve qualified once in 60 years and we want to be competitive in every qualifying campaign. We qualified for the Euros, but we didn’t for the World Cup, yet we were still competitive. We need to get that consistency into our game.”