Bellamy thrilled to navigate 'crazy' Kazakhstan build-up

International friendly: Wales v Canada

Venue: Swansea.com Stadium Date: Tuesday, 9 September Kick off: 19:45 BST

Coverage: Live on iPlayer, BBC One, BBC Radio Wales, Radio Cymru and Sounds, the BBC Sport website and app, plus live text commentary.

The phrase Craig Bellamy kept repeating in the build-up to Wales' exhausting, logistically challenging World Cup qualifier in Kazakhstan was "no excuses".

This 7,000-mile round trip was the furthest the men's team had ever travelled for a qualifying match and, after just one training session before departing, when their injury-hit squad got to Astana they were met with an artificial pitch.

In the aftermath of his side's hard-earned 1-0 win at Astana Arena, Bellamy relented.

"Preparation for this was crazy. I'm not going tell you before it," he said with a knowing grin.

"Some players turn up on Sunday, transfer deadline day on Monday and a few of our boys were involved. Then we travelled Tuesday, trained Wednesday – one session. Four hours' time difference, artificial pitch. It's so new.

"Some players are playing, some players are not. It adds to the excitement, but I was a little bit more in the unknown than I would usually like to be."

Bellamy would rather be in control, just as he would prefer his team to control matches.

That is exactly what Wales did in the first half but, in the second, they allowed their opponents - ranked 114th in the world - back into the game and came perilously close to becoming the victims of a momentous result for Kazakhstan.

This was not a vintage performance and Bellamy did not try to hide that fact. When it comes to qualifying campaigns, though, coaches are willing to forego sparkling football in the name of victory.

"To come away with a win, I'm really picky with performances but I don't care," Bellamy added.

"I can travel back, try to get back into the time zone and prepare for the next game.

"Certain parts of the performance I'd love to be better. I'm very greedy with that, but I sort of live in a real world as well."

By real world, Bellamy meant the aforementioned obstacles he and his players had to overcome in order to win in Astana.

Some of those setbacks presented opportunities, none more so than the injuries that allowed 19-year-old centre-back Dylan Lawlor to make his debut from the start.

It was a chance the Cardiff City player seized with a flourish. Lawlor was composed in possession, strong in the air and sound with his positioning.

His "brilliant" performance, as Bellamy described it, was a shining light in an otherwise patchy team performance, and his emergence adds to the coach's defensive options for the rest of this campaign.

Wales now sit out the next two Group J matchdays as they play friendlies against Canada and England, before facing Belgium at Cardiff City Stadium on 13 October.

If Wales are to have a realistic chance of staying top, they need to win all three of their remaining matches and hope Belgium drop points more than once, not just in Cardiff.

After their chaotic 4-3 defeat in Brussels in June, Bellamy said "there's a lot of life in this group" and it is a belief he still holds.

Or at least, that is what he is saying. The former Liverpool and Manchester City forward showed with his comments before and after the Kazakhstan game that we perhaps should not take each one of his public utterances at face value.

"You just don't know," he said on Thursday, citing as evidence the unlikely turn of events on the final matchday of last year's Nations League that saw Wales win their group.

There is an element of the unknown about this group, although Belgium are still widely expected to finish top.

Should that happen and Wales finish second, they will enter the play-offs in March, the same route they took to qualifying for the 2022 World Cup - their first appearance at the finals stage for 64 years.

And even in a worst-case scenario where they fail to finish among the top two, Wales are all but guaranteed a play-off place thanks to their Nations League performance.

So there are a few roads that lead to the 2026 World Cup.

Bellamy just hopes it won't be as long and arduous as the one that took him and his team to Kazakhstan.