Cardiff turns into a theatre of pain and leaves Wales facing an empty summer

Well, that’s something new at least. And don’t worry. It only takes about 30 years, a little bit of scar tissue, and perhaps a mournful novelty song to get over it. Poland had five shots on target all night at the Cardiff City Stadium. 

Unfortunately for Wales all five came in the penalty shoot out at the end of two and a half hours of relentlessly draining Euro 2024 qualifying playoff football.

In the process a first-ever competitive shootout for Wales became also a first-ever defeat by that most knuckle-biting of margins. It fell to Dan James to contribute the decisive miss at 5-4 down, always the worst way to lose in this self-contained theatre of pain. The kick felt wrong from the moment James lined it up. The run was too short. 

There is that feeling, in these moments, of a footballer suddenly cramped in their own space, the radar starting to bleep, the dials whirring, the day starting to slide the wrong way.

Wojciech Szczesny didn’t really have to save it, just remain in the path of the ball. In that moment the air just seemed to leave the stadium, sucked out through the roof into that dark space above the lights. 

Suddenly the white shirts were off like a breaking wave, sprinting from the centre circle, bouncing in the goal in front of the Welsh end, like one of those experiments in how many people can be packed inside a phone box.

And so there will be no Welsh presence in Germany this summer. Not because of one scuffed shot at the death beyond the death, but because of the even goalless draw that preceded it, the slog though qualifying Group D, the struggle to fill the vast empty space left by Gareth Bale, the obvious sense of transition in a young, neat, attractive team.

Whatever the final shake-up, this was