Wales can hold their heads high as they head to Amsterdam for the last 16 of the European Championships despite falling to a 1-0 defeat to Italy in Rome giving the home side a perfect record in the group as they make their way towards Wembley.<\/p>\n
A late first half goal from a well worked free kick was enough to give the Italians a third successive win and Wales battled hard despite the sending off of Ethan Ampadu in the early stages of the second half.<\/p>\n
Despite the personnel disadvantage at that stage, Wales could\u00a0 – and possibly should – have got themselves level but Gareth Bale blazed over when well placed after another good move saw the ball break to him unmarked in the penalty area.<\/p>\n
Danny Ward was on hand with another superb performance to keep the Italians restricted to just one goal and, despite a Swiss victory over Turkey in Baku, the scoreline was enough to secure progress for Wales and a date in Amsterdam next Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
We will find out our opponents this evening when the outcome of Group B is finalised with the Welsh opponents to come from Denmark, Finland or Russia for a place in the last eight.<\/p>\n
Gareth Bale:\u00a0<\/strong>“We knew it was going to be a difficult game but we got the job done, finished second<\/span><\/p>\n “It was a little bit disappointing to lose the game, it’s natural, but the boys just grafted, ran all day and did what we had to do.<\/span><\/p>\n “We really dug deep. We showed the character again and I’m proud of everybody.”<\/span><\/p>\n Robert Page: <\/strong>“Of course it does because we’ve got second spot, it’s that feeling of winning<\/p>\n “Don’t underestimate the character of a Welshman. It’s phenomenal what the changing room has got in there. I’m bursting with pride.<\/p>\n “Now the real stuff starts.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wales can hold their heads high as they head to Amsterdam for the last 16 of the European Championships despite falling to a 1-0 defeat to Italy in Rome giving the home side a perfect record in the group as they make their way towards Wembley. A late first half goal from a well worked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,305,49,203],"tags":[606,317],"class_list":["post-43946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-team","category-international-news","category-news","category-opinion","tag-euro-2020","tag-20-21-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43946","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}