Craig Bellamy suggested a boxing promoter would not pit Wales against England owing to the gulf between the squads and said his side must be at \u201cfull gas\u201d if they are to compete at Wembley on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Wales head along the M4 for the friendly before returning to Cardiff to host Belgium in a crucial World Cup qualifier next Monday. The Wales<\/a> manager said he had enjoyed analysing Thomas Tuchel\u2019s side in preparation.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have a ridiculous squad,\u201d Bellamy said. \u201cThey have a transfer market value of \u00a31.4bn, ours is \u00a3170m. If you were a boxing promoter you wouldn\u2019t put us together \u2013 it wouldn\u2019t be allowed.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s rough \u2013 but are our players undervalued or their players overvalued? There\u2019s a context to that as well. We don\u2019t go off values, but the simple fact is they don\u2019t just have one team. They have two, three, four and France and others have the same.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have a player who cost \u00a3100m in midfield [Declan Rice], players worth \u00a360m, \u00a380m. It\u2019s really top and that\u2019s why you want to be up against these boys. I\u2019m not saying this is going to be the case but when I was at Burnley it was the best. You never learn more than when you get your ass kicked.\u201d<\/p>\n Bellamy believes it is \u201ca matter of time\u201d before England end their quest to win another major tournament after near-misses at the delayed Euro 2020 and Euro 2024<\/a>. Wales have not played England since a comprehensive 3-0 group-stage defeat<\/a> at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, their seventh defeat in a row by England.<\/p>\n Bellamy cherrypicked England<\/a> as opponents because he is keen to test his team against higher-ranked nations and said his relationship with John McDermott, the Football Association\u2019s technical director, helped secure the friendly. Wales have been allocated around 7,500 tickets.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just can\u2019t compete with these teams if we are not full gas,\u201d Bellamy said. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s like, great, let\u2019s try to be full gas all the time so that we only live with full gas.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n