Cymru U21 head coach Matty Jones believes the underdog mentality will continue to play an important role for his squad while the amount of young talent emerging through the Welsh football pathway offers plenty of excitement ahead for the next campaign.
The draw for UEFA U21 EURO 2027 qualifying took place at the House of European Football in Nyon, Switzerland on Thursday morning and matched Cymru with Denmark, Belgium, Austria and Belarus in Group I. Cymru are in one of the three groups of five teams for the qualifying campaign with the fixtures to be confirmed shortly.
“We came here hoping for a challenge and that’s exactly what we’ve had,” explained Jones following the draw. “We’ve spoken over the last few weeks about what’s important for our players developing through the system. Of course, qualification is an objective of ours, but the clear objective for me is to support players through providing them with the opportunities to play some of the best nations and prepare them in the best way for the senior national team.
“That underdog mentality, that siege mentality, has always been vitally important to us as a nation. We have to use that in the right way, we have to manage our own expectations and we have to manage emotion around that as well. We have to get the creative aspects of our play right and make sure that we’re prepared tactically. I’ve come out of the draw excited because of the amount of talent and ability we’ve got in our group of players, and within all the age groups also. It’s so exciting.”
Denmark and Cymru were in the same group for for the last U21 qualifying campaign with the Danes reaching the finals that will take place in Slovakia this summer as group winners. However, Cymru claimed an impressive 2-2 draw in Denmark at the start of the campaign before suffering a 2-1 defeat in the reverse fixture at Rodney Parade. The two teams were also drawn together in qualifying for the 2017 tournament.
“I had a feeling we would draw someone from the previous campaign and I did feel it would be Denmark,” Jones added. “It would have been nice to have avoided them just to have something of a different challenge, but the positive for me is that we have learnings to take away from our previous experiences against them. Taking points off Denmark in the first game of the last campaign was a huge and monumental achievement for us within this age group, especially in a June window, which is difficult to manage.
“I don’t think there’s pressure on me or the players. The onus is on every other team in this group as the expectation is on them to win games, and the expectation is that we will lose games just because of where we are ranked in the pot compared to Denmark, Belgium and Austria. Our expectation is always to overachieve, that’s what we did in the last campaign, and that’s what I will be setting out to achieve this time around.”
The last time Cymru played against Belgium at this level was in qualifying for the 2021 edition of the competition when Brennan Johnson scored the only goal of the game in a famous 1-0 win at Wrexham. Belgium would get their revenge in the return match with a 5-0 victory at the end of the campaign, but like Cymru, their current generation have also missed out on qualification for the finals this summer.
“We will achieve one day and qualify with this age group just like other age groups are showing,” said Jones. “But the ultimate aim as we all know is that we want our senior team to do well, and that happens by us feeding those best players into the senior team as early as possible and being prepared. The pool of players we have to select from is getting wider and wider, so why wouldn’t you be excited?”
The group fixtures will take place between March 2025 and October 2026 with the play-offs taking place the following month. The nine group winners and the runner-up with the best record (not counting results against sixth-placed teams) qualify directly for the final tournament to join co-hosts Albania and Serbia in the summer of 2027. The eight other runners-up contest the play-offs to determine the four remaining finalists.
