Craig Bellamy's Wales Future in Doubt After Burnley Move Fails

Craig Bellamy walked into the Wales job talking about dreams. Euro 2028 on home soil. The “best job in the world.” A long-term project through to 2028.

Now he walks back into it under a cloud.

His proposed move to Burnley has fallen apart, and with it, according to one of his former team-mates, a chunk of trust between Bellamy, the Football Association of Wales and the supporters he was supposed to lead into a new era.

“Burnt a lot of bridges”

Iwan Roberts, who shared a dressing room with Bellamy for Wales and Norwich City, did not bother softening the edges.

"He's lost a lot of love and faith among the fans and I would think he's burnt a lot of bridges," Roberts said, speaking to S4C's Newyddion.

Bellamy, 46, had held talks with the Clarets about succeeding Scott Parker at Turf Moor, a club he knows well after serving as Vincent Kompany’s assistant and briefly as caretaker boss between 2022 and 2024. The approach was formal: Burnley went to the FAW with a view to prising him away from the national team.

The deal is now understood to be dead. Not because of compensation to the FAW, but with negotiations around Bellamy’s backroom staff emerging as a key sticking point.

The damage, though, is done.

Roberts believes the whole saga has left Bellamy in an “awkward” position with his employers in Cardiff and with the fanbase that had embraced a fiery former forward as the face of a new cycle.

"The Association and Noel Mooney know that Bellamy is looking at other jobs and has had his head turned by the links to Burnley," Roberts said. "The big question now is whether they keep him on as national team manager."

From “best job in the world” to an uneasy return

Bellamy was appointed Wales boss in 2024 on a contract through to 2028. He has been open about his ambition: he wants to lead Wales at Euro 2028, a tournament spread across England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland.

That vision helped sell the project to players and fans. A long-term leader. A clear target. A manager who insisted he was all-in.

Which is why Roberts believes the Burnley links cut deeper than a routine job interview.

"The players will know that if he'd had the chance he would have left and gone to Burnley," Roberts said. "That after saying this was the best job in the world and how much he was looking forward to leading Wales into the next Euros."

The dressing room will not be naive. They understand the lure of club football, the daily work, the control, the rhythm of Saturday to Saturday. But they will also know their manager tried to walk away barely a year into the job.

"The next few days are going to be quite interesting I would imagine," Roberts added. That might be an understatement.

Back to Wales – but not as before

Inside the Wales camp, the mood will be mixed. Gareth Bale has already warned it would be a “major blow” for Wales to lose Bellamy, underlining the respect the head coach still commands among some of the country’s biggest modern icons.

Another former Wales striker, Malcolm Allen, took a different angle. Speaking to BBC Radio Cymru, he said he was pleased Bellamy will remain in charge with the European Championship two years away, but he did not gloss over the fallout.

He understood the attraction of Burnley: the chance to step back into the day-to-day intensity of club management, to build and shape a squad over 50 games a season rather than a handful of international windows.

But he also recognised the new reality.

"It's an uncomfortable situation to be in," Allen admitted, before landing on the key issue now facing Bellamy – the reaction of the Wales support.

"The problem, when he comes back with his tail between his legs because he hasn't got the job with Burnley, is how Wales fans will respond to this," Allen said. "There will be some who were frustrated after we failed to reach the World Cup thinking 'how can we allow him back?'"

That World Cup failure still stings. Financially as well as emotionally.

"The situation financially is that the FAW don't have a lot of money at the moment after we missed out on the World Cup," Allen pointed out. That reality makes sacking a manager on a long contract far from straightforward.

So Bellamy stays. Not because everyone is convinced, but because the alternatives are complicated and expensive.

Only one way back

For all the noise, the route out of this is brutally simple.

"So he will have to win those fans over and the only way to do that will be to win games," Allen said.

No carefully worded statement will fix this. No interview about passion or pride will erase the fact that, given the chance, Bellamy was ready to trade the dragon on his chest for another crack at the club game.

The next Wales squad announcement, the next home game, the next stumble in qualifying – all of it will now be framed by this failed move and the sense of a manager who looked elsewhere before the job was even halfway done.

Bellamy wanted to lead Wales into Euro 2028. After Burnley, the question is no longer about his ambition.

It is whether the country still wants him to be the man at the front when that tournament finally arrives.