It was a massive win: Wales forward Gareth Bale on beating Belarus

Gareth Bale labeled the thrilling 3-2 comeback win over Belarus in World Cup qualifiers as “massive”. After netting an incredible hat-trick, he went on to praise his teammates for coming through issues with travel and the pitch to secure a crucial victory. Bale ended his two-year Wales scoring drought as his team defeated Belarus in Kazan. The Real Madrid forward had not added to his 33 goals since scoring against Croatia in October 2019 – a period of 16 games. In the qualifying for the 2022 World Cup, he has now been directly involved in all five of Wales’ goals – three goals and two assists. Wales will next host Estonia at the Cardiff City Stadium on Wednesday.

“It was a massive win,” Bale told Sky Sports. “Every game counts and these kinds of games when you are expected to win are probably the hardest. Everything was against us, it wasn’t a good first half whatsoever, but I thought in the second half we really changed that and got on the front foot. I thought Mark Harris had a big impact on the game and it was like Andorra in the first qualifier for Euro 2016, getting that goal will hopefully keep our momentum going and hopefully we can keep that into the next game.”

‘Qualification is alive’

“Qualification is alive, we lost to a very good Belgium team but it is important we win every other game. I know the performance and we all know the performance wasn’t good enough in the first half, we corrected it more in the second half, we bounced back and showed character to get the result. In the back of my mind I was thinking about the missed penalty in the Euros, but it was great to score two tonight, because they were important goals.

“The winner, it was a last-gasp effort, I tried to hook it in and I was ecstatic as I knew it was right into the last few seconds. Everything hasn’t gone for us in terms of the travel or the pitch, but it is what it is, thankfully we have got the three points and we can get out of here.”

Rob Page: Gareth Bale led by example

Wales’ win moved them to within four points of Group E leaders Belgium. Speaking about the win, Interim manager Rob Page was happy with the result and Bale’s outing, but was not pleased with the overall performance. “I’m pleased because we got the points,” Page told Sky Sports. “I said to the players, good teams, even when they are not playing well, find a way to win, and that’s exactly what we have done today.

“We got the best possible start. They changed their mentality slightly. We started doing things we hadn’t worked on and going off the game-plan, which we addressed at half-time. But the remit was to come out here and put in a performance that gets us three points and we have done it.

“The standards we have set as a group, we fell well short. But we found a way to win. The big players stepped up and Gareth [Bale] certainly comes into that category. He led by example today.”