Cymru are out of the World Cup after a calamitous sequence of events in the play-off match against Bosnia & Herzegovina in Cardiff on Thursday night. The defeat on penalties following a 1-1 draw was an unjust travesty. Cymru were clearly the better side and completely outplayed thuggish and disruptive opponents, yet somehow contrived to lose. It is not difficult to pinpoint who was responsible. The buck must stop at the boss, Craig Bellamy.

Once a game has kicked off, there’s little a manager can do from the touchline apart from yell instructions and bicker with officials. Just about the only way he can directly influence events is by making or not making substitutions. And this is where Bellamy blundered disastrously. Cymru were 1-0 up, dominating the match and looking likely to soon score a second goal when midfielder Jordan James, who had taken a bad knock and was limping, had to be substituted in the 56th minute. To replace James, Bellamy had a choice of 10 outfield players on the bench and he picked the worst possible option: Liam Cullen.

The workaday Swansea City forward is by no stretch of the imagination a defender, a defensive midfielder, a central midfielder, a tackler, a creator, an authoritative presence or for that matter a player remotely approaching international quality – so why the hell bring him on to make up for the loss of James with Wales leading in a crucial match and with half an hour still to go? Far better sub options sitting on the bench would have been Ben Cabango (Swansea’s captain and an astute defender), Lewis Koumas (a versatile attacking midfielder with plenty of skill), Rhys Norrington-Davies (a strong, mobile, left-sided defender who always impresses), Sorba Thomas (an attacking midfielder with far more menace than Cullen who has the knack of keeping the opposition busy), or even Josh Sheehan (a Bolton defender plagued by injury lately but with the experience and character to see out 30 minutes effectively).

Cullen proceeded to have a nightmare. He repeatedly gave away free kicks with inept attempts at tackling that took the pressure of Bosnia, got him booked, turned the tide of the game and switched the pressure onto Cymru, and he seemed to have no clue what he was supposed to do, dropping deeper and deeper into defence to the point where he was getting in the way of Cymru’s actual defenders. It was Cullen who, with a wild, panicky swing of the boot, gave away the unnecessary corner from which B&H got the equaliser just four minutes from the end of normal time, and it was Cullen who was marooned marking nobody almost on the goal line and hampering goalie Darlow when 40-year-old Edin Džeko rose unchallenged above him to make the score 1-1. His very presence on the pitch was such a liability Cymru would have been better off if Jordan James had been sent off and they were down to 10 men. I’ve got nothing against Cullen, but this performance should definitely terminate his international career.

But Bellamy’s substitution blunders didn’t stop at Cullen. In the 74th minute, with Cymru still 1-0 up and in control, he chose to take off the excellent David Brooks and bring on Mark Harris, a strictly limited journeyman attacker who has never fulfilled early promise and these days appears mostly for Oxford United reserves. Brooks, who had the B&H defence in disarray every time he ran at them, wasn’t injured and was certainly capable of playing for another 16 minutes, especially with so much at stake. This was a tactical substitution without a shred of justification or common sense. Anonymous Harris barely touched the ball and, without the problem of Brooks to deal with, you could almost hear the B&H players sighs of relief and feel the confidence surging through them and their raucous supporters.

Then, with just six minutes left and Cymru still leading, Bellamy put the tin lid on his catastrophic mismanagement by bringing on Sorba Thomas for Dan James, who had scored Cymru’s goal in spectacular fashion and relentlessly menaced B&H with his incisive pace. The mistake here wasn’t the introduction of Thomas, a dangerous winger who can deliver killer crosses. but bringing him on for Dan James rather than Cymru’s other wide man Brennan Johnson. Johnson had one of those games which have become all too familiar – for both Cymru and Tottenham Hotspur, who recently sold him to Crystal Palace for a larcenous £35 million. He seems to have lost all the abilities that drew him to Cymru’s attention when he first emerged in 2020 with Nottingham Forest: he can no longer shoot, score, dribble, go past a defender, cross the ball, anticipate, tackle or make any impact on games. He was crying out to be substituted, but it was Dan James who Bellamy took off – giving Bosnia & Herzegovina one more big boost and encouraging them to throw every man forward now that James’ electric speed was out of the picture. The equaliser duly came within minutes – and just to rub in the irrationality of Bellamy’s devotion to Johnson, it was Johnson who later ballooned his penalty over the bar, not even forcing the goalie to make a save and allowing Bosnia & Herzegovina to decisively gain the upper hand in the penalty shoot-out.

The players are not to blame; Craig Bellamy is solely responsible for snatching defeat from the clutches of victory. Most of the world’s football nations would have sacked the manager already after such a suicidal performance – but the FAW, as ever, lacks the ruthlessness, steel, ambition and purpose to do what’s right for Wales, and is so fixated on monetizing everything that bearing the costs of tearing up his contract would be unthinkable. We are therefore lumbered with someone whose appointment was always high-risk, who flattered to deceive in his managerial honeymoon period, and who has far too many ‘issues’ to successfully tackle the immense, demanding and thankless task of managing Cymru. He should now do the decent thing and resign.