Wales suffered a 1-0 Nations League defeat to Denmark as Rasmus Hojlund scored the game’s only goal from the penalty spot.<\/p>\n
Danny Ward’s second-half error proved crucial as the Wrexham goalkeeper gifted the ball to Gustav Isaksen in his own penalty area.<\/p>\n
Ward, attempting to atone for his mistake, went to close down Isaksen but brought down the Denmark forward for a clear spot-kick.<\/p>\n
Hojlund stepped up to slot the 75th-minute penalty home with ease and secure a Denmark double over Wales after their 2-0 victory in Copenhagen last weekend.<\/p>\n
Wales had beaten World Cup quarter-finalists Norway on Thursday, but that victory appeared to take a lot out of Craig Bellamy’s side.<\/p>\n
Bellamy tends to make significant changes to his starting line-up, once again doing so in this international window given the short turnaround between fixtures.<\/p>\n
But Bellamy made only one alteration to the side that started against Norway, Brennan Johnson replacing Daniel James in attack.<\/p>\n
Brentford playmaker Mikkel Damsgaard was absent for Denmark and the visitors lost skipper Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg to injury inside the opening 10 minutes.<\/p>\n
Ethan Ampadu fired over from 25 yards as his search for a first Wales goal went on and Johnson volleyed wide at the far post.<\/p>\n
But Denmark sent an early shot across Welsh bows after Ben Cabango was caught in possession and the off-balance Hojlund fired tamely at Ward.<\/p>\n
Wales shaded first-half possession – 54 per cent to 46 – but Denmark carried the greater attacking threat.<\/p>\n
Isaksen fell under Ben Davies’ challenge in the act of shooting, with some Denmark players believing the tackle was worthy of a spot-kick.<\/p>\n
Morten Hjulmand headed wide and Isaksen was wayward with two attempts in the space of 60 seconds as Denmark pressure grew.<\/p>\n
Oliver Provstgaard sent a header over and Wales were relieved to reach the interval level.<\/p>\n
This was both teams’ fourth game in 11 days, and the extended programme appeared to be taking its toll as far as the intensity levels were concerned.<\/p>\n
Wales were nowhere near as energetic as they had been three days earlier, and they were opened up soon after the restart.<\/p>\n
Andreas Skov Olsen broke down the right to deliver a cross which the sliding Hojlund sent goalwards, but Ward produced a fine stop with his legs.<\/p>\n
Sorba Thomas was not as prominent as he had been against Norway, but his centre ricocheted off Lewis Koumas’ shoulder and ended up in the grateful hands of Mads Hermansen.<\/p>\n
Wales were fortunate to escape when Ward did superbly to push Isaksen’s header on to a post.<\/p>\n
Johnson sent an angled attempt over before Cabango collected a second yellow card in the competition, ruling him out of Wales’ trip to Norway in November.<\/p>\n
Bellamy tried to inject some urgency with a raft of arrivals from the bench, but Wales still struggled to trouble the well-organised visitors.<\/p>\n
The optimism of home fans seeped away after Ward’s error denied Wales a first clean sheet since November.<\/p>\n
Wales, however, move up to third place in Group A4 as Norway’s defeat in Portugal sends them to bottom spot on head-to-head results with the Dragons.<\/p>\n
Davies ‘proud’ despite ‘disappointing’ loss<\/p>\n
Wales’ Ben Davies speaking to BBC Sport:<\/p>\n
“I didn’t feel like there was a whole lot in the game, to be honest. It’s a tough way to concede and a disappointing loss.<\/p>\n
“We’d have loved to have had more (points) but when you’re playing against very good teams, strong opposition and the situation we’re in where we’re missing some key players, that’s football.<\/p>\n
“We gave it our all and I’m very proud of the group.<\/p>\n
“You can’t fault the effort that’s in this group, so we’re going to go into the next two games with nothing to lose.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wales suffered a 1-0 Nations League defeat to Denmark as Rasmus Hojlund scored the game’s only goal from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-921337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}