Josh Sheehan Prepares for Nations League Challenge After World Cup Heartbreak

Josh Sheehan carries the glow of promotion and the sting of a missed World Cup into Cardiff this week. One season has barely closed, another challenge already looms.

Fresh from helping Bolton Wanderers climb back into the Championship via the League One play-offs, the midfielder reported for Cymru duty with the adrenaline of Wembley still in his legs. The celebration, though, has been brief. The mood around Craig Bellamy’s squad is shaped by something far more painful.

That penalty shoot-out defeat to Bosnia & Herzegovina in March still hangs over them. It cost Cymru a place at the FIFA World Cup. It cost a generation of players another shot on the biggest stage.

Sheehan doesn’t shy away from it.

“Of course there’s disappointment,” he said. “We all wish we were preparing for the World Cup right now, but we’re not. It’s disappointing, but we have to learn from it.

“We believe we should have been there, but now our focus is on the Nations League and the challenges ahead.”

That is the pivot point for this group. The regret is real, but so is the sense of unfinished business. The Nations League, starting in the autumn, offers no soft landing. Cymru have been dropped straight into the deep end of League A with Portugal, Norway and Denmark waiting.

Those are the nights they want. Those are the nights they feel they belong in.

“We’ve got to learn from what happened and look forward,” Sheehan insisted. “We’ve got some big games coming up and that’s the level we believe we should be at. We want to keep moving forward as a group.”

Before that, there is a different kind of test. Ghana arrive in Cardiff on Tuesday night, World Cup-bound and sharpening their edge. For them, it is a tune-up. For Bellamy’s side, it is a measuring stick.

“They’re a good team and they’ve got some very big, important players who are at the top of their game,” Sheehan said. “We know going into the game it’s going to be tough.

“It’s a warm-up game for them going into the World Cup, and I think they’re a nation going into it looking to give it a real go. So we know it’s going to be a tough game, but we’re more than confident that if we do what we do and perform to our levels, then it’s going to be a good game.

“It’s one of those games where, going forward, we know they’ve got threats we’re going to have to be wary of. But we also look at it from our perspective as well, we know we can hurt them too.”

This isn’t just theory for Sheehan. Ghana’s attacking threat includes a face he knows well.

The fixture could put him directly up against Antoine Semenyo, once a raw teenager on loan at Newport County, now transformed into one of the Premier League’s most dangerous forwards and leading the line for Ghana. Sheehan watched that rise from close range.

“I’ve played with Antoine Semenyo before, and he’s done so well in his career, now at Man City,” said Sheehan. “He was a quiet boy, but when he stepped on the pitch, honestly, straight away he was so strong, so fast, so direct.

“You could tell from that moment he was going to go on and have a good career. He did well in that FA Cup game [2-1 win against Leicester City] and from then he was already being linked with big clubs. So from that point you knew he was going to go on.

“When he was at Newport he was only 18, but he carried himself on the pitch like he was a lot older. You could see it straight away, good with his left foot, good with his right foot, strong. Even at 18, he wasn’t fully developed yet, but you could tell in the next few years he was going to kick on.”

Now, that once-quiet teenager leads the line for a country heading to a World Cup, while Sheehan stands at the heart of a Cymru side trying to turn heartbreak into fuel.

The margins at the top level are thin. On Tuesday in Cardiff, Cymru will find out exactly how thin they are – and whether the memory of March has hardened them for the battles to come.