International Friendly | The Official Match Thread | England v Wales | 19:45, 09/10/2025 | Wembley Stadium

[Smurph]

Ramsey out injured.

I’m shocked to the core.

Didn’t see that one coming

 

[monmouth]

Can't help but feel that this game is a massive mistake. Barring a miracle, it'll be total humilification.

 

[Smurph]

Can't help but feel that this game is a massive mistake. Barring a miracle, it'll be total humilification.

Someone mentioned the other day it could impact our seeding for the draw at the World Cup should we qualify and lose to England

 

[jackharris]

Can't help but feel that this game is a massive mistake. Barring a miracle, it'll be total humilification.

Absolutely bonkers scheduling this match before the Belgium match. But as 6,500 Cymru fans will be there I sincerely hope it doesn’t go horribly wrong for us. Nothing to gain from it.

 

[jackharris]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1975158277957898295

 

[jackharris]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1975226339449074121

 

[exiledclaseboy]

Can't help but feel that this game is a massive mistake. Barring a miracle, it'll be total humilification.

Someone’s going to have to work hard to explain the point of this game to me. A friendly against our closest neighbours, away, which we’ll probably lose heavily because it would be madness to risk many of our first eleven, four days before a must win World Cup game against the best teams in the group. I just can’t work out the logic.

 

[Malaga]

Dress rehearsal against difficult opposition seems to be the idea, no point playing Gibraltar before a huge game

 

[Frankie Burrows Cap]

Someone’s going to have to work hard to explain the point of this game to me. A friendly against our closest neighbours, away, which we’ll probably lose heavily because it would be madness to risk many of our first eleven, four days before a must win World Cup game against the best teams in the group. I just can’t work out the logic.

In 1 word… money

The idea that it damages our ranking for the World Cup is a bit of a red herring as we’d lose very few points for losing away to England (and would have gained very few for beating a lower ranked team). There’s a chance it could be that tight but reality is we need to win the last 2 games (and ideally get a draw or win against Belgium next week) and that’ll more than likely put us in the top pot for the playoffs irrespective of the result on Thursday night.

 

[PenlanJack]

Someone’s going to have to work hard to explain the point of this game to me. A friendly against our closest neighbours, away, which we’ll probably lose heavily because it would be madness to risk many of our first eleven, four days before a must win World Cup game against the best teams in the group. I just can’t work out the logic.

England and Belgium are about the same quality opposition, if he starts a solid 11, it'll be madness, but if you want to get up to speed and prepare against the elites you've got to play against them.. if we played some minnow and trounced them, it wouldn't be a beneficial preparation game.. Bellamy definitely has a say on this, it could be madness, it could be genius, typical Bellamy

 

[jackharris]

 

[jackharris]

 

[Swanjaxs]

Would have been better off taking the squad over to Spain or Portugal for a few days of warm weather training than playing a meaningless friendly that we are more or less guaranteed to get pumped in. Only negatives will come out of playing England at Wembley, and absolutely no positives. Crass stupidity from the FAW.

 

[Frankie Burrows Cap]

Would have been better off taking the squad over to Spain or Portugal for a few days of warm weather training than playing a meaningless friendly that we are more or less guaranteed to get pumped in. Only negatives will come out of playing England at Wembley, and absolutely no positives. Crass stupidity from the FAW.

Not allowed anymore unfortunately.

Partly down to ourselves and other countries gaming the system (ranking points and rest before big games). Now every team has to play the same number of games in every international window.

Who we play is a point for discussion (and personally I wouldn’t have gone for England for numerous reasons) but as I mentioned previously the ranking points for friendlies are very small compared to qualifiers.

 

[JackFish]

Yeah as mentioned we have to arrange friendlies now. Given the way the groups have been arranged this time around I think there's only 5 teams we could have actually played (Poland, Romania, Moldova & Gibraltar are the others) without finding a non-UEFA opponent again as well.