Last Updated: 29-07-2020
As the premier league comes to an eventual close for the 2019/20 season, it's not that long ago that an altogether different major footballing competition was due to conclude in July 2020, and for a lot of fans of the Welsh national team, this may not be such a bad thing.
On the 7th of March 2020, a small corner of football twitter descended into despair as the news had began to disseminate that Joe Allen had ruptured his Achilles tendon, and would subsequently miss EURO 2020, leaving a gap in the heart of a Welsh side desperate to repeat the fortunes of the 2016 edition of the same tournament 4 years prior.
Confirmed ruptured Achilles for Joe Allen. Out of the Euros. Devastating news, up there with Bale and Ramsey as player Wales did not want to lose.
— Phil Blanche (@philblanche) March 7, 2020
After finding out Joe Allen has suffered a season-ending injury. pic.twitter.com/bFoXBPxQll
— Callum Ellis (@CallumJEllis) March 7, 2020
me after finding out joe allen might miss the euros pic.twitter.com/k5lHPaj1ff
— Rhys Fields 🏴 (@RhysFields) March 7, 2020
In hindsight, it seems deranged to think that Euro 2020 would go ahead as planned as COVID-19 swept through the Wuhan, Europe and the rest of the world. The pandemic disrupting not just football, and the wider sporting calendar, but all aspects of nearly all lives around the globe. At the time of writing, over 500,000 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19, with over 45,000 of those in the UK. I’d like to take an opportunity before I continue that this article expresses how the Welsh national football may benefit from generally moving an international tournament, but I'm altogether extremely hesitant to state that anyone has really benefited from a pandemic that has yet to be fully contained and claimed the lives of so many.
Due to the disruption of the Euro 2020 tournament, and delay to June 2021, it looks like Joe Allen will have enough time to recover from a fairly severe injury, and with good health permitting, will have the opportunity to represent Wales at a major tournament once more. For the uninitiated, Joe Allen has a cult-like status amongst many followers of the national team. Outsiders may only know him as a physically diminutive midfielder with passive yet tidy passing ability, but to Welsh fans, he’s seen as an energetic yet experienced athlete capable of covering every blade in the middle of the pitch, and a player that brings a much-needed sense of calmness to a generally inexperienced side.
Not just bolstered by the return of one of the experienced and irreplaceable pieces of the Welsh midfield, Wales will generally be a stronger side in 12 months time. Anyone who has looked closely at the Welsh squad under Ryan Giggs’ tenure will have noticed what has been fairly young selection strategy, capitalising on the excellent improvement by the FAW to develop the teams at youth level. In the past, and even during our more successful period around 2016, previous managers would be more likely to fill the international squad with players that may be able to play a part should an injury arise, but would more than likely not compete for a place in the starting XI or feature throughout an entire qualifying campaign. Where David Cotterill would be selected in the past, Rabbi Matondo now gets the nod. Exposure to training and playing with world-class players like Gareth Bale or Aaron Ramsey can go a long way in developing a young player into a valuable squad member in the future. Ryan Giggs seems to have contemplated the opportunity-cost of looking at lesser experienced players with a higher ceiling to future proof and capitalise on the recent success of the national team.
As I mentioned, the FAW have done an excellent job in improving the national youth teams by improving the setup and quality of coaching, and also by widening the net to explore all of the players that can qualify to play for the national team. In qualifying, Wales routinely selected some of the youngest squads throughout the campaign. The chart below shows the number of players aged 23 or less selected for each nation in qualifying and the average squad age as of 22nd May 2020 - around the time most teams would have selected their squads, and coincedentally, around the time I wrote and executed my scraping python script.
Here are each of the national team squads represented by the number of players 23 years or younger (x-axis) against the average age of the squad (y-axis).
Wales occupies this space in the top left amongst Luxembourg and Turkey, with the joint-highest number of players 23 years or younger selected.
The squads in the top left represent national sides with strategically young selection criteria. The bottom right represents countries with much older squad selection strategies. A country like Iceland may require a more pragmatic selection approach, with fewer players to choose from. After all, Iceland is a country with a population of around the size of Cardiff.
For a number of countries, being placed in the bottom right may also represent what may have been a golden generation coming to the end of their international incumbency.
However, if we want to look at the number of young players that actually got minutes for national teams during qualifying, we can look at the number of players 23 years or younger to get at least a single minute during qualifying, and the weighted average based on minutes played.
Now we see England have as many players 23 years or younger as Wales, but with an average age that's over a year younger. Given the success of the English youth teams between 2015 and 2020, this isn't too much of a surprise, with many of these players such as Jadon Sancho, Mason Mount and Trent Alexander-Arnold featuring heavily for both club and country. Frighteningly, there are still many young English players performing in the premier league that are yet to be integrated into the England senior setup. With another year to prepare, they represent a potential force in the Euro 2021 finals.
Looking at countries that have already qualified, there's a general trend that countries that have already booked a place at the Euros have generally younger squads. This is probably more a trait of countries with a conveyer belt of talent ready to field the next generation of talent after the next, this is would be your tournament regulars like France, Germany and the Netherlands.
If we include the countries that still have a chance of qualifying, these are generally older squads to those that have already made it. These countries were also more lowly seeded when it came to qualifying, with less of a chance to leave the first round group stage of these finals.
Of course, UEFA has already confirmed the teams in group A: Wales, Turkey, Italy and Switzerland, which are all generally younger teams by comparison.
Turkey finds themselves in a similar position to Wales, with 9 players 23 or younger getting some minutes and with a weighted average age of 26.5 years.
The abundance of youthful quality players Turkey has to choose from comes as a surprise, in a previous article where I looked at the Champions League, Galatasary, the sole Turkish representitive, had the oldest squad in the group stages of the competition. Digging deeper, only 3 of the 9 players 23 years or younger play their football domestically in Turkey: Güven Yalçın (22 & 50 minutes), Abdülkadir Ömür (21 & 27 minutes) and Altay Bayındır (22 & 0 minutes). A lot of their talent is being produced elsewhere, most notably in Germany.
However, they have some very fine young players developing in the national team. Merih Demieral, Zeki Çelik and Cengiz Ünder are all very good players, and will only get better before next summers Euro 2021 tournament.
Switzerland and Italy are a little older than the aforementioned squads - however, something that does stand out is the total number of players selected for these squads. Switzerland picked just 32 different players over their 2-year qualification campaign, and Italy used 41. The average across all countries was 34.5, Wales used 35, and Turkey used 38 for reference. Italy has a fairly steady conveyer belt of young players developing in Serie A, however, Switzerland may find themselves needing to initiate some unused younger players to prevent stagnating at Euro 2021 and in future tournaments.
Looking at these aggregated squads doesn't necessarily give us a complete picture. For instance, Kosovo had the youngest squad by average age weighted by minutes (25.4), but only featured 5 players 23 years old or younger.
Below we can see each player to have been called up to an international squad during the Euro qualification campaign. By selecting a country from the drop-down, we can filter to only those players.
By looking at Kosovo we see from the players selected the majority of minutes were distributed amongst players aged 22 to 28. Kosovo is a peculiar case, they were only initiated into FIFA and UEFA membership as recently as 2016 and played their first competitive match in the same year. They still have a chance of qualifying for Euro 2021, and all that stands between them and a place at the next tournament is a play-off against North Macedonia and subsequently the winner of Georgia and Belarus.
Developing and nurturing prodigious talent is one thing, but as mentioned at the top, particular players around the squad such as Joe Allen will be relieved that the tournament has been delayed. A few featured members of the Welsh squad have had less than stellar seasons at club level. This has been either down to injuries, down to bad form and/or not getting regular minutes on the pitch. Below, we'll go through a few other players that could benefit from the delay.
Having impressed in his debut Premier League season with Bournemouth a year ago, David Brooks spent virtually all of this season injured, and would've essentially missed the entire season if not for the delayed conclusion to the Premier League as he eventually featured after the restart. Brooks has already proved to be a huge talent, and exhibited his worth after coming and scoring (an albeit deflected) goal against Croatia that almost gave us a route to rescue a draw in Osijek. Despite Bournemouth being relegated, Brooks has shown that he already has Premier League quality, and shouldn't be short of potential suitors. Hopefully, a full season unimpeded by injury and with regular minutes should see him not just retain his level of performance from a year ago, but to steadily develop.
Just about everyone was looking forward to seeing how Ethan Ampadu's career would progress after signing a season-long loan deal with RB Leipzig for the 2019/20 season. However, Ampadu only made 3 substitute league appearances for Leipzig in the Bundesliga, the final game being on the 15th of February when he came on for the remaining 30 minutes in a 3-0 win against Werder Bremen. To British audiences this may have come as a surprise, as 4 days later, he played 90 minutes against Tottenham Hotspur where Leipzig won 1-0 in London. Ampadu didn't look out of place as a dominant Leipzig subdued the Tottenham front line.
Ethan Ampadu (19) vs Tottenham
— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) February 19, 2020
Touches - 109 🥇
Accurate Passes - 93 🥇
Pass Accuracy - 95% 🥇
Interceptions - 5 🥇
Chelsea fans will have enjoyed that display pic.twitter.com/u8wGhgF767
Only time will tell how his spell at Leipzig will shape his career, the tutelage of "wondercoach" Julian Nagelsmann may benefit Ampadu for years to come. One thing that can't be overlooked was the end to his season. Ampadu failed to feature at the end of the season due to growing pains according to transfermarkdt.
With Ampadu returning to a Chelsea team that conceded 54 goals this season (the highest in the top half of the league), there should be ample opportunity for him to win a place and become a regular starter in the team. Coupled with what will hopefully be a clean bill of health, a player with such a high ceiling should kick on and stand out at Euro 2021.
Arguably 2 of the best players for Wales, not just in the last decade but of all time. When Wales outperformed expectations in France four years ago, it was largely down to the performance of Bale and Ramsey. Welsh fans will always wonder what if Aaron Ramsey (and Ben Davies) were not suspended for the fateful semi-final against Portugal.
Leaving Arsenal and joining Italian and European giants Juventus was a dream move for Aaron Ramsey, and after making 33 appearances across all competitions, this marks what has been a fairly good year in terms of health for the Cardiff City graduate. In the games he featured in there were some impressive performances such as the goal and assist in a (then) vital 2-0 win against title rivals Inter in Turin. However, there's been an uncomfortable feeling this his form has been a little patchy throughout the season, and being unable to nail down a place in the Juventus midfield there are rumours that he will be moved on in the summer in order to free up what is an extremely bloated wage bill. Aaron Ramsey is 29 years old at the time of writing, and may not have many major tournaments left with Wales, especially given his track record in regards to injry. To put him in this category may feel harsh, but he went nearly 18 months without playing for Wales due to injuries, but it's hard to deny Ramseys only 2 appearances in the qualifying campaign really saved us from missing out on Euro 2020, with 2 excellent performances against Hungary and Azerbaijan.
As has been much publicised in Spain, Gareth Bale has not been welcome in Zinedine Zidane's Real Madrid side for some time. The tweet & video below describing what has been a less than ideal situation for some time now.
From Champions League hero to sleeping on the sideline.
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) July 19, 2020
Where did it all go wrong for Gareth Bale at Real Madrid? pic.twitter.com/WQK2JpSh2T
Luckily for Wales, Bale's international form has largely been independent of his troubles at club level. Nevertheless, at 31, no one would deny it would be better for Bale to be accruing minutes and getting his confidence up. Welsh fans have become accustomed to the sight of Bale stretching out cramp at the end of a game for Wales, and building solid minutes would undeniably benefit his performances, especially with the rigorous schedule of an international tournament. Bale has unequivocally been our best player for the last decade and as he enters his 30's there's an inescapable feeling that we only have so much time left to see a world-class Gareth Bale single-handedly beating other teams.
One saving grace for Bale this time around is that the quality at the offensive end of the pitch is undoubtedly better, and there is less of a burden on Bale to carry the team in an attacking sense. While he remains the focal point of the team, there will be less attention paid to him by the opposition defence as other players such as David Brooks and Harry Wilson can punish should teams not setup properly defensively.
Whether the latest edition of the UEFA Euro tournament was played this year, or next, Wales will undoubtedly have been or will be in for a tough challenge. Italy, Switzerland and Turkey are all teams with regular major tournament experience, and the former two regularly surpass the group stage. It's very unlikely that we will be able to recapture the success of the 2016 Euros, but history has a way of making everything that has happened before to have seem inevitable in hindsight, and I think we have more reason for optimism this time around.
All of the data for this article was sourced from fbref.com.
The code to generate this page can be found on my github repository.
If you enjoyed this article, or have other questions, get in touch by email, through my twitter, or through LinkedIn.
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