FAW to continue 'Gary Speed legacy' with new high performance strategy

The Football Association of Wales intends to strengthen "the legacy of Gary Speed" with a new high performance strategy to aid player development.

FAW chief of football Dr David Adams says much of the organisation's good practice can draw its roots to Speed's brief time as Wales manager.

Speed took his own life in 2011 and left the football world in shock.

"I think we will all be aware of what Gary Speed did when he came to the national team in 2010," Adams said.

"He was the catalyst for change in terms of how we approached high performance, and a lot of the principles and the things that he did at that time are obviously with us now."

The Wales men's team are one game away from qualifying for their first World Cup in 64 years, facing either Scotland or Ukraine on 5 June in a play-off at Cardiff City Stadium for a place at the finals in Qatar.

After reaching the semi-finals of Euro 2016 and the last 16 at Euro 2020, a place at a World Cup would continue Wales' resurgence as a footballing nation.

"It's a long time, 1958 is a long time isn't it not to get to a World Cup?" Adams said.

"To get this team to a World Cup, given the fact that Gareth Bale is coming maybe towards the end of his career and Aaron Ramsey, and all these players that have been so invested in what we've been doing in Wales in the last 10 years - and the legacy of Gary Speed - it would be a fantastic send-off for those players who have given so much of their time to improving our Welsh football landscape.

"What this high performance strategy is trying, I suppose, to articulate is that we've got a lot of talented young players in Wales, we want to try and retain the best talent in Wales.

"So having put a strategy around the talent idea and retention to make sure we retain our most talented players, both male and female, in Wales, but also recognise what Gary did really well was connect with players and put support around the players."

Adams says that support would include but not be limited to psychologists, nutrition, physical development, GPS monitoring and recovery.

"We've put a lot of resources into those areas in the last 10 years, but we're still looking at marginal gains and how we can improve our player support services," Adams said.

"We recognise our player pathway in Wales has been very, very successful.

"We recognise the value of cap accumulation, the value of international experience for our 15, 16, 17s (year olds) boys and girls and that transition and opportunity that our managers give our young players - like (senior women's manager) Gemma Grainger is doing now with Carrie Jones for example, and what (senior men's manager) Rob Page is doing with Neco Williams, those sort of players, Brennan Johnson for example.

"So we see a huge value in our player pathway and this high performance strategy has a big focus on effective pathways for progression of our most talented young players.

"And we recognise the value that the coach brings and in Wales we have a rich history of developing fantastic coaches. So our coaching system is about ultimately making sure that we keep developing coaches that are capable of improving our young players, but also succession planning for the future of our national team.

"So those four key strands - talent identification, the player pathway, the player support services, and the coaching system - is fundamentally our high performance strategy.

"We've been doing those things for a long time, but now we're actually articulating it, putting the resources behind it and putting the momentum behind it to ensure we can keep maintaining our progress, both in the male and female game.

"The high performance strategy is the process goal to enable us to achieve those big goals around qualifying for major tournaments.

"So we're really focused on this high performance strategy to make sure we can keep dreaming big... trying to get to major tournaments successively and try and get our women's national team to a World Cup or European Championships.

"We know that would be a game-changer for the women's and girls' game, it will increase participation, get more girls playing football and that's obviously a big part of our strategy."