CARDIFF -- Wales manager Craig Bellamy says watching his team lose their World Cup playoff to Bosnia and Herzegovina on penalties hurts and will leave him with a sleepless night, but is adamant there's a bright future ahead for this group of players.
Bellamy's side suffered the heartbreak of losing 4-2 on penalties on Thursday night in Cardiff with Brennan Johnson and Neco Williams both missing from the spot. That followed a 1-1 draw over the course of 120 minutes where Daniel James opened the scoring in the 51st minute with a long-range effort, only for Edin Dzeko to equalise in the 86th minute.
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"I'm going to hurt tonight, it's going to be a sleepless night," Bellamy said. "It makes me more determined, the sun will rise tomorrow. There will be a solution."
At the end of the match, Bellamy addressed his players on the pitch.
"I don't usually like doing a huddle I felt I had to say something. I said something like, 'I know it's not a consolation, but there's some exciting times ahead for you as a group of players. You have the Nations League coming up, Group A -- home nations Euros coming, it's not a bad time to be a Welsh footballer.'
"My heart hurts -- I haven't really felt like this towards a group of players. When you see players really disappointed, it hurts you more. I believe this team will continue improving and the players coming in will enhance the team, and I only see a bright future for Wales."
Bellamy said ultimately the final 20 minutes of normal time cost Wales, where the game descended into "chaos." He said they need to manage those situations better, and rather than retreating into their shell, they needed to keep the pressure on the ball.
Despite Bellamy predicting a bright future for this group, the pain of this heartbreak will linger. Johnson was visibly distraught at fulltime as he left the pitch, and others were also in tears.
"We're devastated, that's the only word for it," Karl Darlow said on the BBC. "We've given our everything out there and come this for, unfortunately it wasn't to be tonight.
"We've played our own brand of football and we can be proud of that. It's such a young group full of talented characters, we're devastated tonight but we are growing and you can see that over the last couple years. Hopefully exciting times ahead!"
Wales captain Ethan Ampadu added: "We're lost for words. We prepared as well as we could have and I thought we played well.
"We can hold our heads up high because we fought for everything, sometimes in life things don't go your way. We're always going to look back at what we could have done better, maybe we could have managed the last 10 minutes better to make sure we stayed on the attacking foot.
"That's something we can look at in the future, but for now it's a lot of disappointment."
