Craig Bellamy: Calling back to Wales with memories of Gary Speed

When the FAW’s chief football officer Dave Adams and chief executive Noel Mooney interviewed Bellamy at Burnley’s training ground, he had prepared a presentation of remarkable detail.

As well as a thorough tactical analysis of Wales, the 45-year-old also impressed his employers-to-be with a comprehensive assessment of every player’s physical data.

Even more striking than his eye for detail, however, was Bellamy’s passion and his sense of a calling.

Bellamy was 15 when he left his home city of Cardiff to pursue his dream of making it as a professional player at Norwich City.

In his autobiography, he said moving away from his family and friends at that age “killed a part of me” and “taught me to isolate myself, to be single-minded… to be emotionally detached”.

A highly successful but nomadic career exacerbated that isolation, while self-doubt and introspection played on a troubled mind.

Speed’s death was one of the catalysts for Bellamy’s decision to seek help and, while mental health issues do not simply heal like a broken bone, the Wales head coach is calmer and more content these days.

You get that sense when you spend time in his company now. Bellamy is thoughtful and articulate – infectiously enthusiastic about a range of topics – though an intensity still burns inside.

That fire makes him compelling to listen to. You can imagine how inspiring that must be for Wales’ players, who have been awestruck in their admiration for the new head coach’s meticulous methods.

Bellamy contains multitudes. To watch him lead Wales on to the Cardiff City Stadium pitch for his first game against Turkey on Friday will be to watch a man, still in the fledgling stage of his coaching career, approach an end point of sorts.

Having spent most of his adult life outside of Wales, Bellamy felt a gravitational urge to return.

To stand on the touchline when the anthem plays will be a moment of spiritual arrival and yet, knowing how football can drag you away from home, Bellamy cannot shake the sense that nothing lasts forever.

Even at this beginning of a new era, there is the sense of an ending.

“I didn’t see myself coming back to Wales but I always felt that pull back here,” Bellamy says.

“I’m grateful for that happening. I want to reconnect just for myself to gain peace.

“Because I do imagine this will be my last period in Wales, these next three or four years or whatever that period is, I try not to look too far.

“I want to soak up everything I can, get to see every part of it, get to enjoy every part of it as well.

“It sounds a bit strange but I see it that way because, good or bad, football will probably take me out of here then.”