A superb performance by Wales

The debutants Wales smashed Russia 3-0 after a sensational performance in the final match of the Group B. The Dragons finished with 6 points and won the group, leaving the teams of England (5 pts.) and Slovakia (4 pts.) behind them. The Russians became the second team to leave the championship, after collecting only 1 point in 3 games. The victory for Wales means that the team is going to play against one of the third-placed teams of group A (Albania), C (Poland or Northern Ireland) or D (Croatia or Czech Republic). The Three Lions are going to face the second best team in group F (all the teams of this group are still involved in the battle for this place). To continue with, Slovakia are surely going to find their place in the Round of 16, even though they left in the 3rd place of their group.

The Fans at the stadium in Toulouse saw one of the most brilliant matches in the history of Welsh football. Aaron Ramsey opened the score in the 11th minute. Just nine minutes later Neil Taylor doubled, and in the 67th minute Bale, himself, also sent the ball into the net. He managed to set a new record, scoring the biggest number of goals for his country at a major tournament.

The head coach of Russia, Leonid Slutsky replaced all of his three central midfielders, betting on Denis Glushakov, Pavel Mamayev and Roman Shirokov. Dmitri Kombarov started as a left fullback. Sam Vokes was the only change in Wales’ starting eleven.

Real Madrid’s superstar Gareth Bale could open the score in the first minute of the game, when advanced into the penalty area and took a shot with his left foot, but Igor Akinfeev saved. Then, the Russians tried pressing higher and that worked for about 10 minutes, but in the 11th minute Joe Allen assisted brilliantly to Aaron Ramsey, who left one-on-one with the keeper and lobbed him, to score the first goal of the game. 1-0 in Wales’ favour!

The Russians seemed to be very confused after the goal and The Dragons took advantage of the situation. In the 20th minute, Gareth Bale dribbled the ball through the centre of the pitch, a Russian defender touched it and unfortunately for his team found the left fullback Neil Taylor of Swansea City, who had no problems to score the second goal of the game.

However, Wales was simply better than their opponents and created many goal-scoring chances (mainly on counter attacks). During the second half, Bale had the chance to shoot from a free-kick, but he couldn’t repeat his attempts from the first two games (against Slovakia and England). The forward eventually found the net in the 67th minute. Aaron Ramsey made a great pass, Sam Vokes was in offside position but he didn’t play with the ball. Gareth Bale ran on the left flank, took the ball and scored with the outside part of his left foot. 3-0!