Josh Sheehan's Journey from Heartbreak to International Challenge
Josh Sheehan carries the glow of promotion into camp, but the bruise of March has not faded.
Fresh from steering Bolton Wanderers up to the Championship through the League One play-offs, the midfielder reported for international duty this week with a medal in his bag and a nagging regret in the back of his mind. Cymru should have been preparing for a World Cup. Instead, they are preparing for Ghana in Cardiff on Tuesday night.
The penalty shoot-out defeat to Bosnia & Herzegovina still stings around this squad. It was a night that closed a door they were convinced would open.
“Of course there’s disappointment,” Sheehan 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.”
There is no attempt to dress it up. They believed they belonged on that stage. They still do. The response, Sheehan insists, has to come in the months ahead, not in what-ifs.
“We believe we should have been there, but now our focus is on the Nations League and the challenges ahead,” he added. “We’ve got to learn from what happened and look forward. 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.”
From heartbreak to heavyweight company
Craig Bellamy’s first major task is to turn that sense of injustice into fuel. The Nations League offers no gentle reintroduction. Cymru are in League A, dropped into a group with Portugal, Norway and Denmark – a run of fixtures that will test not just their quality but their depth and nerve.
Those nights in the autumn are the horizon. Ghana are the dress rehearsal.
World Cup-bound and brimming with talent, the Black Stars arrive in Cardiff using this game as a final tune-up before the tournament. For Cymru, it is a measuring stick: a chance to see how their hurt, their new ideas under Bellamy and their belief hold up against a side heading to football’s biggest stage.
“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.”
That balance – respect without fear – is exactly where Bellamy will want his players. Ghana’s pace and power will stretch them. Cymru’s own aggression and rhythm, sharpened by the likes of Sheehan, will have to answer.
A familiar face in different colours
For Sheehan, there is an extra twist. Across the halfway line on Tuesday, he could be staring at a reminder of just how quickly careers can accelerate.
Antoine Semenyo, once his team-mate at Newport County, has grown into one of the Premier League’s most dangerous forwards. The Ghana striker is now at Manchester City, a rise that does not surprise Sheehan in the slightest.
“I’ve played with Antoine Semenyo before, and he’s done so well in his career, now at Man City,” Sheehan said. “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.”
On Tuesday, that raw teenager-turned-supercharged international becomes a problem to solve. Sheehan has seen the damage Semenyo can do at close quarters. Now he and his team-mates must find a way to contain him.
Cymru stand at an awkward crossroads: World Cup dreams gone, Nations League giants looming, a high-calibre friendly about to expose any weakness. The disappointment is real, the schedule unforgiving. The question now is simple – can they turn that pain into the edge they will need in League A?
