Football Daily | One man’s odyssey and a Hollywood striker get Wales fired up for Kazakhstan

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Considering Cymru head coach Craig Bellamy is so patriotic that he lives in a house constructed entirely of Fragrant Spring daffodil bulbs, thinks the long-running BBC soap opera Pobol y Cwm is a documentary and has Dafydd Iwan’s stirring anthem Yma o Hyd as his ringtone, it was no surprise he was impressed by the journey undertaken by Wales fan John McAllister to get to his nation’s World Cup qualifier in Kazakhstan. Currently sitting second in Group J, a point behind North Macedonia but with Belgium three points further back with two games in hand, Wednesday afternoon’s match in Astana is a fairly must-win one for Wales. Anything less than three points would prove a crushing disappointment for McAllister, who set off for the Kazakh capital from Barry five weeks ago and has taken in 11 football matches, no end of foreign boozers, a heavy metal gig and some Irish stranger’s stag do as he travelled around 5,000 kilometres east across four time zones and 12 countries on a series of 17 trains, 11 buses and one plane (a flight he’d rather have not taken but was unable to avoid).I am definitely used to playing in hot temperatures now in Italy” – recalled England midfielder Ruben Loftus-Cheek reckons he can handle the heat – which is handy given Thomas Tuchel’s side may have to play in dangerously scorching conditions at the Geopolitics World Cup next year.I only read Big Website of course (ahem) but I did chance upon this piece in yesterday’s Estadios de España on Atlético Madrid’s B team and their new stadium. Yes, it’s international fortnight and I’m bored already. Apparently, in 1999, they finished second in the Segunda División but obviously couldn’t be promoted to La Liga as Atlético Madrid were already there. And, to make things worse, just a year later, Atlético Madrid were relegated to the Segunda División in 2000 so the B team were forced to go down into the third tier!” – Noble Francis.The photo of Arsenal players celebrating their 1971 FA Cup win (yesterday’s Memory Lane – full email edition) was well captioned. The only info missing was, who is that dude in the background giving off Saturday Night Fever vibes? We deserve to know” – Jim Scullion.I can’t tell you how relieved I am to finally see the back of the transfer window. My brain was so saturated with rumours, cliches and transfer jargon that I lost the ability to distinguish between a deal sheet and a sh!t deal. I simply couldn’t deal with this sheet anymore” – Peter Oh.This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions. Continue reading...

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