{"id":367771,"date":"2026-03-27T09:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T09:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/367771\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T09:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T09:24:07","slug":"world-cup-live-northern-ireland-and-wales-beaten-in-qualifying-play-offs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/367771\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup LIVE: Northern Ireland and Wales beaten in qualifying play-offs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wales squander winning positionpublished at 08:15 GMT<\/p>\n<p>08:15 GMT<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-fxb76l-Paragraph e14e9ror4\">Wales 1-1 Bosnia and Herzegovina (2-4 on pens)<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1l98ssq-Contributor etflsgg2\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/6627a6e9-dc63-495d-a542-304e48ee3e75.jpg.webp.webp\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/>Dafydd Pritchard<br \/>BBC Sport Wales<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For a third successive campaign, Wales found themselves two home wins away from qualifying for a major tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having successfully navigated the play-off to reach the 2022 World Cup &#8211; their first for 64 years &#8211; they missed out on Euro 2024 at the final hurdle against Poland, two years ago to the day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Contrasting as the emotions were on those occasions, the experiences all contributed to how familiar a game of this magnitude felt for Wales. They had been here before.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This was for large parts a mature performance but, having looked like putting the result beyond doubt as they chased a second goal when 1-0 up, it was alarming how quickly Wales allowed the game to get away from them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bellamy&#8217;s substitutions laid bare his squad&#8217;s lack of strength in depth, as Wales faded badly and struggled to regain momentum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This defeat will hurt the head coach and his players, who will use this pain as fuel for their attempts to qualify for Euro 2028, which Wales will co-host with England, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Before then, however, they must analyse this defeat and learn some harsh lessons from a qualifying campaign which promised so much but ultimately delivered nothing.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Daniel James\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/065df5ed-5cc5-4357-8134-9d3e2c025cef.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wales squander winning positionpublished at 08:15 GMT 08:15 GMT Wales 1-1 Bosnia and Herzegovina (2-4 on pens) Dafydd&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-367771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}