Wales end 58 years in the worldwide wilderness when they kick off their Euro 2016 campaign against Slovakia in Bordeaux on Saturday and Gareth Bale says it is “nice to be involved for a change”.
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Wales secured automatic qualification to the Euro Finals with a W6-D3-L1 record in Group B which provided them with a second place finish behind Belgium and they beat all of their group opposition, bar the third place side Bosnia, in the process.
We have got to remember what got us here, ‘ Coleman said. We don’t need to fear anyone, we don’t fear anyone.
Jan Kozak’s men head to France on the back of an eight-match unbeaten run that included a 3-1 win against the world champions in Germany.
And while the 62-year-old, who himself can call on star quality in Napoli midfielder Marek Hamsik, gave little away his plan is to isolate Bale from his team-mates.
“I think we’ve got a lot more passion and pride about us than them. We want to come here and enjoy it and, when you enjoy your football, you play your best”, he added.
“I am excited for England for the first time in a long time”, said Mills.
“I’m a Real Madrid fan and I watch every game”. We were ruthless and that got us success. We want to do them proud. Unless we are right at it, ruthless and awful – that is what we improved from the first campaign to the second.
“I thought it would never happen, but we’re here. We improved our levels of concentration and focus, and we stuck to a gameplan and that was not always pretty”.
Coleman said that Joe Ledley, Joe Allen and Hal Robson-Kanu were all fit after injury problems, the former having fractured his leg a month ago while playing for Crystal Palace.
John Toshack, Neville Southall and Ian Rush are among those often mentioned, as is Ryan Giggs, who remains an inspiration to the talisman of the current side, Gareth Bale.
Bale only played 30 minutes of their final warm up game against Sweden on Sunday, after coach Chris Coleman chose to rest their talisman following his Champions League final victory with Madrid in Milan, in which he appeared to struggle witrh cramp.
“He is used to having the eyes of the world on him and he is looking forward to it”.
He went on: “I’ve played for 10 years for Wales and it’s been a massive goal to qualify”.
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Kozak’s pre-match press conference was inevitably dominated by questions on how they will to stop Bale, who scored 21 goals for club and country last season.
