{"id":297205,"date":"2025-11-20T14:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/297205\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T14:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:26:10","slug":"world-cup-play-off-draw-italy-v-northern-ireland-wales-v-bosnia-winners-meet-in-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/297205\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup play-off draw: Italy v Northern Ireland; Wales v Bosnia &#8211; winners meet in final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Wales could not have asked for more&#8217;published at 13:09 GMT<\/p>\n<p>13:09 GMT<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-8kvzjk-Contributor etflsgg2\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ec761448-de94-46cf-ad41-58f8780ae65f.jpg.webp.webp\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Iwan Roberts<br \/>Former Wales striker<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">So it&#8217;s Bosnia-Herzegovina at Cardiff City Stadium on 26 March next year, a team we&#8217;ve played four times. We&#8217;ve never beaten them<br \/>\nin those four games. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">We haven&#8217;t scored in three of the four. The one game that<br \/>\nstands out in my mind was 10 October, 2015, in Bosnia when we lost 2-0.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But it was a great night because we qualified for the European<br \/>\nChampionships in France in 2016. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They finished second in their group behind<br \/>\nAustria. So they had 17 points from their eight games. Defensively, they were<br \/>\nsolid. They only conceded seven in their eight games, and they didn&#8217;t lose away<br \/>\nfrom home winning eight points from their four games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">So it will be a tough challenge for us, but we are the favourites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And<br \/>\nif we beat Bosnia, we now know<br \/>\nthat we will face either Italy or Northern Ireland in the final, in the same<br \/>\nstadium. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">So that&#8217;s a massive bonus for us. Possibly two home games in the<br \/>\nplay-offs, semi-final and in the final, we could not have asked for more.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Craig Bellamy gives a thumbs up from the sideline suring Wales match against North Macedonia\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/a851c29b-8a6f-41eb-a47a-35165d971c4c.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"680\" height=\"382\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8216;Wales could not have asked for more&#8217;published at 13:09 GMT 13:09 GMT Iwan RobertsFormer Wales striker So it&#8217;s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-297205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}