Mark Pritchard was on target and Shaun Macdonald made his debut as Wales Under 21s ran out comfortable 3-0 winners over Azerbaijan this evening.<\/p>\n
The following report is taken from bbc.co.uk<\/p>\n
Wales Under-21s finished their Uefa Championship campaign on a positive note with a 3-0 win over Azerbaijan on a rainy evening at Newport Stadium.<\/p>\n
Wales broke the deadlock on 64 minutes when left-back Peter Gilbert crossed for Mark Pritchard to head home.<\/p>\n
Adam Birchall doubled the lead, sliding in to score after Azeri goalkeeper Ruslan Majidov spilled a long shot.<\/p>\n
Then Gilbert made the game safe, coolly tucking away Ramon Calliste’s pull-back after the Liverpool striker broke away.<\/p>\n
The result meant that Wales stayed ahead of Azerbaijan at the bottom of Group Six, who they beat 1-0 in Baku earlier in the campaign, finishing with 10 points from their 10 games.<\/p>\n
The match was brought forward three hours because of Azeri concerns over the power of the floodlights.<\/p>\n
There was not even a goal to illuminate the first half in Newport as the visitors sat back and defended in depth, content to pack their half and wait for a breakaway.<\/p>\n
Cardiff’s Curtis McDonald, just 17, impressed on his debut, showing pace and control as Wales probed down both flanks but failed to find an end product.<\/p>\n
Azerbaijan showed greater adventure after the break but it was Wales who took a deserved lead.<\/p>\n
Calliste and Gilbert swapped passes down the left and the Leicester full-back sent in a telling cross for Pritchard, arriving unmarked six yards out, to power a header past the helpless Majidov.<\/p>\n
Arron Davies then somehow managed to scoop a shot wide from six yards, although he made amends after 68 minutes by setting up Wales’ second.<\/p>\n
The Southampton attacking midfielder’s fierce low shot from the left was palmed out by Majidov, right to the feet of Birchall who coolly slammed the ball home.<\/p>\n
Azerbaijan hit back with a shot from Romal Huseynov which was well saved by Lee Worgan, before Murad Aghakishiyev hit a post from outside the box.<\/p>\n
Shaun MacDonald came on for his debut with 11 minutes left in place of Anthony Pulis and almost scored with his first touch – a dipping drive over the angle.<\/p>\n
But the third goal for Wales arrived after 86 minutes, when Calliste’s clever play on the by-line ended with a rolled pass which Gilbert side-footed home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Pritchard was on target and Shaun Macdonald made his debut as Wales Under 21s ran out comfortable 3-0 winners over Azerbaijan this evening. The following report is taken from bbc.co.uk Wales Under-21s finished their Uefa Championship campaign on a positive note with a 3-0 win over Azerbaijan on a rainy evening at Newport Stadium. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}