Walsall boss Michael Flynn hails the work of Welsh ahead of World Cup

Not only is Flynn a proud Welshman having been born and bred in Newport, he benefitted from the facilities at the Football Association of Wales Dragon Park in doing his UEFA Pro Licence.

The £5m complex, situated close to Newport, was opened in 2013 by Michel Platini. It has seen alumni such as Thierry Henry pass through, with Flynn graduating at the same time.

He name checked John Toshack and Gary Speed as being instrumental in starting to develop young Welsh football talent and paid ttibute to the hard work of all the coaches behind the scenes.

He said: "The amo8unt of work, research and time that has been pent into making Wales a competitive football nation has been immense.

"And it has been no mean feat considering it is a nation of only 3m people, I think it is down to the coaches, the work behind the scenes and the infrastructure that has been created within this centre that has seen such success.

"Apart from getting to it's first World Cup since 1958, Wales reached the semi -final of the European Championships in 2016 - another great achievement and have gone from strength to strength in recent years."

Asked about how Wales would do in the tournament he said they would need a good start against USA but they had every reason to feel confident.

He said: "They are a decent team - better than people give them credit for I have seen them play Wales before and was impressed. If we can get a result in that game I think it will give us confidence to go into the other two thinking we can get something out of those as well.

"I don't like to make predictions - especially around here where the club is American owned and a large number of the staff and players are English, but I just hope it is a good tournament, and that obviously Wales do well in it."