Google Craig Bellamy Anderlecht . Discover that, after typing the first two letters of the Belgian top-flight club’s name, Google is butting in. Rerouting you to the main road, the orthodox Bellamy flavours: Craig Bellamy An-gry. Craig Bellamy An-d John Arne Riise. Craig Bellamy An-d Anything To Do With A Golf Club.
If Welsh football on the modern international stage has been defined by the crossing of albatrosses and cathartic exorcisms, it’s perfectly appropriate, then, that their new men’s national team manager began his new job doing a pocket-sized version of just this: publicly shedding his boyish irascible snakeskin and emerging into the sunlight as something smooth-edged and self-composed, a 44-year-old capable of donning a baby blue suit and white sneakers before lunchtime and looking simultaneously urbane and terrifying.
But maybe this is misleading. What is it like to play for Craig Bellamy the Manager? Is this a stale take? That is The Question now that the former Burnley assistant manager was announced as Wales’ new head coach on Tuesday, taking over the reins from Robert Page following the latter’s dismissal in June. Bellamy inherits an odyssey from his ex-Wales teammate. Not only will the Premier League great need to reinvigorate a squad still navigating the post-Gareth Bale era; he will need to re-calibrate a fanbase unsure of how far they can dare to dream again.
Which means the answer to The Question gets progressively more important as the days inch closer to September.
So far, the general consensus revolves around the brace position. Bellamy has 'finally grown up', the claims go, but his reputation precedes him: fearlessly patriotic, brazenly emotional, a riot act-reading rabble-rouser. “Temperament,” Bellamy addressed the media earlier this week, like a professor on the first day of class scrawling the term’s motif across a chalkboard. “That’s a nice word that usually gets used.”
“A good influence,” Wales international James Lawrence offers by way of foil when this depiction of his former manager at Anderlecht is put to him. “He was very calming.”
The 31-year-old defender is speaking over the phone from Amsterdam, where he is training following the expiration of his contract with Nurembourg FC. The last few years of Lawrence’s career have been nomadic and injury-plagued: moving from Anderlecht to St. Pauli to Nurembourg. A successful surgery in January to repair a tandem disc herniation has provided hope for the future as Lawrence searches for a new club.
It’s a similar state to that when Lawrence first met Bellamy in mid-2019. Both men were in respective stages of transition and uncertainty. Bellamy was appointed Anderlecht under-21s manager that summer upon Vincent Kompany's appointment as first-team head coach. The appointment came months after Bellamy stepped down as Cardiff City academy boss following allegations of a bullying culture (no disciplinary proceedings were opened against Bellamy).
Lawrence had returned to Anderlecht after a successful season with the club and a shock call-up to the Wales national team under then-manager Ryan Giggs (“Well, shock for everyone else,” Lawrence laughs. “I knew I was on the right path.”) to discover the club was moving in a direction under Kompany that didn’t include him. While searching for a new club, Lawrence and other discarded first-team players trained with Bellamy.
There is a gentle and fervent admiration in Lawrence’s voice as he speaks about his fellow Welshman and the magnetic co*cktail of empathy and tough love and mutual respect with which the ex-striker helped Lawrence and others traverse a difficult period.
“He was a good mentor, especially in that period for me,” says Lawrence. “I’d played a whole season, gone away with the national team and expected everything to stay as it was when I returned. Then there was a huge shift in the club, a phase I didn’t expect. But then, having Craig there – he’s a very open person. He talked a lot about his own experiences. He’s been there, he’s been in these situations. He was able to say: ‘Look this is how it is. You can sit on your hands and be down about it. Or you can get on with it.’
“He gave us a space where we could be, could still develop instead of feeling like we were left out on the side. He made us feel important, even though we weren't playing any games for him. He just said, ‘Look, the only thing I ask is while you’re here to give me your all and train at 100%.’ At the same time, he was giving us feedback as well. So it wasn’t just a focus on the 21s, he focussed his time and energy on us as well.”
The candid vulnerability Bellamy shared with players like Lawrence was also hugely influential. “We could have a very relaxed chat about more personal things. If we needed any help mentally or anything like that, we could always go to him. It was a huge help for me at the time. He helped me kick on from there.”
At Anderlecht, Bellamy’s approach to coaching was one of quid pro quo and fairness. “He’d tell the players, ‘I’m a straight talker. I’ll tell you exactly how it is. But at the same time, if you do fine, then I’ll also tell you that as well.’”
The League Cup winner demanded high standards of professionalism and attitude that were non-negotiable, but to call Bellamy strict would be misleading, Lawrence says. Training sessions were enjoyable and challenging. Playing style hinged on a trinity of excitement, energy and expression entangled with carefully curated principles.
“Build up from the back, goalkeepers aren’t playing long balls, if you’re playing against a high press, you’re encouraged to find the solution against it,” Lawrence remembers. “He was very principled in that way. Every position needed to know exactly what their role was in what kind of system and how the opponent’s going to play against that. He gave the players that knowledge then trusted players to carry that out.”
He adds: “What he was doing with us and the 21s was exciting. You’re not just sitting in, waiting for the opponent to make a bit of cat and mouse with Craig. It’s about going out there, making your own stamp on the game as a team, to pressure opponents into making decisions they don’t want to or forcing them to play in a way they don’t want to by using that press.”
That Bellamy claimed he spent the week preceding his official appointment watching Wales’ next opponents, Turkey, eight times doesn’t surprise Lawrence in the slightest. Bellamy is scrupulous and painstaking with preparations, a dedication to a craft verging on obsessive.
“He really wants to know the data, the details,” Lawrence says. “And it will be in detail. From what I remember, the detail in which we were working was really, really specific. I mean, you're talking down to a few metres in terms of your press or curving your run in a certain way. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he watches Turkey another eight times in the next week and the week after that as well.”
The question soon arises if Lawrence, who has won 11 caps for Wales, might consider a possible reunion with Bellamy in the coming months. His final cap arrived in the 3-2 World Cup qualifying victory against Belarus in September 2021, his final call-up in November later that year.
“I'm in a completely different phase of my career, that's completely out of my mind,” Lawrence says in a manner that is neither gruff nor self-effacing. “I’m getting on a bit. I think it’s great Wales have Craig and so many good young players. That freshness is a good idea. Maybe it's time for something new. I really hope that Craig brings new life back into the Wales team.”
On the subject of his Wales caps, Lawrence is grateful: he still thinks about his debut against Slovakia at Cardiff City Stadium, the hilarity of his initial anonymity, the special nights spent in two successive qualification campaigns, despite their simultaneous cruelty: getting injured just before the 2020 European Championships and having to miss out, then getting injured shortly before the 2022 World Cup qualification playoffs.
Despite returning to fitness later in the year, Lawrence says he never received a phone call from then-manager Page despite promises he’d be involved in the future. Instead, Lawrence describes “radio silence”, barring sparse calls from FAW staff to his club to glean a steer on fitness levels.
Lawrence is not alone in alleging poor communication from Page. Cardiff City boss Erol Bulut has been a fierce critic of the ex-Wales boss and his supposed lack of dialogue, while others have alleged a poor dedication of time to attending matches to keep tabs on current and new talent.
That Lawrence played on another continent meant his window of opportunity was effectively slammed shut. And while Lawrence is by no means bitter, he is certain that Bellamy – who previously criticised Giggs and Page for living in England and says he will return to Cardiff to do the job – will not be so hands-off.
“As a coach, you need to be able to see someone in person and they're going to fit into the way you want to play,” he says. "And I really don’t doubt he’ll travel around and do just that. He’ll be really heavily involved at all times in all aspects of coaching. That was how I experienced him. The intricate things, he loved doing that.”
That Lawrence holds no ill feeling towards the sudden and silent end to his Wales career speaks to Lawrence’s current contentment. He is fully recovered from surgery. The future is his. In a way, he has opted to carry on Bellamy’s initial advice: to either sit on his hands, or get on with it.
“It's been a tough year in that sense,” Lawrence says of the injuries and uncertainty. Right now I'm really happy to be fit again and focused on what's coming next. From where I am now, I feel I'm in a really good place again. I’m having some talks with some clubs. We'll see where we go from there.”
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