Craig Bellamy is staying with Wales, at least for now. He has turned down club interest and says he sees the next two years out with the national side, with Euro 2028 still the target and the job still feeling unfinished to him. The FAW are said to be confident he will complete the contract he signed in the summer of 2024.

Why Bellamy is not taking a club job yet

Bellamy made the case in plain terms. "Everything's in place, I get completely backed and it's going to give me the opportunity in the next two years to improve again," he said. He also added, "I couldn't see it being fair for me to walk away. That's not right."

That is the clearest answer to the club links around Burnley and Celtic. The interest has been there, but so has the release clause. Any club suitor would have to pay at least £700,000 to remove Bellamy from his FAW contract, and the Wales side of the story is still the stronger one.

Bellamy's own language backs that up. "Wales gave me this opportunity and I'm really grateful for that," he said, before adding, "We're not going anywhere. We're going again, we've got another two years."

The June record he wants to fix

The harder edge to this story is Bellamy's own assessment of Wales' form. "When I look at our record in June, June friendlies or June competitive games, nowhere near good enough. Thirteen games, nine losses, two wins - one was last year. You want to be a serious nation? Our June record's nowhere near, so we have to correct that," he said.

That is a fair warning, and it matters more than the club gossip. Wales made an unbeaten start in Bellamy's first nine matches, which explains why the FAW are so confident about his stay, but the June numbers show the job is not settled. He is not pretending otherwise.

There was also some disagreement over the wording of Wales' World Cup exit, with one report describing it as a play-off final at home to Bosnia-Herzegovina in March and another calling it a semi-final defeat on penalties. Either way, the wider picture is the same, Bellamy has work to do, and he sounds more interested in correcting Wales' standards than in cashing in on a club move.

The next checkpoint is simple enough. Bellamy remains with Wales, the release clause stays in place, and the real question now is whether the June record starts to look less like a warning sign and more like an outlier.

Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 2 outlets. How we work →