Without out Wales were fucking garbage.

So where did it go?

He was injured, wasn't he?

After all the crowing by Coleman about golden generations and the like it's quite amusing Ireland won last night and that they still haven't qualified for a World Cup since 58.

I watched the first half and it was diabolical it made England this week look like Brazil 70.

Together stronger

They didn't have enough passion

They did well at the Euros but the whole performance was greatly exaggerated. It was the easiest tournament to qualify for ever, then at the tournament it was harder to go out in the first phase than qualify FFS they lost to England!! Then the narrowly beat Northern Ireland (who have done better them since and are a smaller nation) it was at this point the players showed an unbelievable lack of professionalism and class filming themselves celebrating England's defeat to Iceland. Then came the one good performance against Belgium. Then they were well beaten by a fairly average Portugal team, yes I know they won it but it summed up an awful spectacle of a tournament that they did. For this they had an open top bus tour and spouted uttter shite about having lots of 'passion' where's that passion when your one good player is injured?

Iceland last night (you know the team they mocked England about) won a group and automatically qualified for the World Cup in group with Croatia, Turkey and Ukraine in it. Far harder than Wales group. This a country with a population of 300,000 as well. Now that is an achievement worthy of an open top bus. Hopefully the Welsh will shut the fuck up generally and especially about passion now

They can watch the World Cup how they have for the last 60 years in the summer 'passionately' supporting whoever are playing England.

Quite a week for schadenfreude

Darlows double mishap
Scotlands genetic shortcomings
Wales's sudden loss of passion

Iceland are extraordinary though, they have a smaller population size than Malta or Luxembourg. It's almost like the Isle of Wight qualifying for the World Cup.

The weird thing with Wales hating England is the vast majority of English people want Wales to do well, and probably hoped they'd win last night.

Scotland and Wales out, potentially Ireland too. If we're comparing England against these footballing nations we've done well to qualify. We can only hope we're not drawn against a big team like Iceland when we get to Russia.

Iceland are massive over achievers, but if they can do it with such a small population it makes even more of a mockery of England's set up. Iceland's domestic league is pretty poor, they never get past qualifiers in club Europen competition yet their national side has some very good players.
Our national and domestic game is setup purely to make money.

I think the vast majorly of English people were like that before the Euros, they've been fairly insufferable since then. I wasn't overly bothered either way about the outcome of last night but the outcome was certainly the most amusing in my eyes.

I think Wales would have qualified for Euro 2016 even if it had been a 16 team tournament. Their form had been good enough, they finished 2nd in their group and there was nothing to suggest another 2nd placed team would have beaten them in a playoff.

This world cup campaign has been very poor though. Whilst it was ultimately a shame for them that Bale wasn't available for arguably their biggest world cup match since that game against Romania in 1993, realists will surely recognise it was the inability to hold onto leads against Serbia, Austria and perhaps most crucially, Georgia at home as the moments at which qualification was squandered. Bale played every second of those three games.

Ireland were poor overall I thought, as gutsy as their defensive effort was. They were better in the second half when they seemed to re-organise in a 4-4-2 but I think they'll do well to emerge from whatever playoff they get. Particularly when you consider it could be Italy or Croatia.

I watched it on the welsh channel, wales were a bit lost going forward without bale.

I'm also fluent in welsh now.

Did bobbity bing come up?

It's popty ping fyi and it means microwave

Whoever said the Welsh were simple folk!?

Iceland's investment in football at all levels is astounding. The quality of their facilities across the island is very, very good.

The following from a Guardian article also gives some insight into why they over-achieve....

'However, the biggest difference between the UK and Iceland is probably in the provision of coaching for young players. Even some of the youngest age groups are instructed by highly qualified coaches in Iceland. From the age of four every child has a Uefa-accredited coach. From the under-10s age group upwards the coach has to hold a Uefa B qualification, a level that allows coaches in England to manage right up to professional clubs. Also, all coaches are paid in Iceland, which is in sharp contrast to the majority of English coaches, who tend to be volunteers and very few of them will be Uefa B qualified.'