VFTN x Craig Bellamy – The Future
Steve Morison has stepped up from a very successful Under-23 side and has managed to instil some of the academy methods with some success. You played with Steve for Wales. How did you find playing with him and was he someone you expected to move in to coaching and management? I played with Steve and […]
VFTN x Craig Bellamy – The Present
I’ve been wrestling recently with whether the current crop of players are breaking through because they’re so much better than what has gone before, or is it just a culmination of circumstances and they’re finally giving them a chance? When I was at the academy, we had very limited resources. From day to day, we […]
VFTN x Craig Bellamy – The Graduates
You worked with all of the academy graduates that have broken through this season. All of them have impressed and I just wanted to ask you about each of them in turn. Kieron Evans had a taste of first-team football and impressed in his brief cameos, but others have overtaken him in recent weeks. I […]
VFTN x Craig Bellamy – The Academy
So, you’re back in Cardiff. When I spoke to you last Christmas, you rang me out of the blue because you were back home, at a loose end and we were all locked down, so there was no golf! When I posted our chat though, some people were suspicious of the timing. Neil Harris was […]
VFTN x Craig Bellamy – Coming home
First and foremost, how are you? I read your recent interview with Oliver Holt for The Mail on Sunday and you talked about struggles with your mental health and feeling isolated in Belgium due to Covid restrictions. You mentioned in that piece that you could feel your anxiety levels rise when you came home last […]
VFTN x Mark McGuinness
VFTN were lucky enough to chat to Mark ahead of the trip to Birmingham, where he popped up with a late, trademark towering header to secure an unlikely point. Undoubtedly Cardiff’s Player of the Year to date, McGuinness is now one of the first names on the team sheet and he talks here about his […]
VFTN x Danny Ward
You moved to Cardiff in the summer of 2017, having been relegated from the Championship with Rotherham and you were joining up again with Neil Warnock, who briefly managed you there. Was he a big incentive to join Cardiff? He didn’t need to sell it to be honest. Cardiff is such a big club and […]
It’s time for Cardiff to start growing their own managers
If, as expected, Steve Morison is named Cardiff’s manager for the foreseeable future, then the academy is indeed truly having a breakthrough year. With a raft of youngsters all stepping up to the first-team, and none of them looking out of their depth, Cardiff are benefitting from unexpected strength in depth when they need it […]
VFTN x James Rowberry
James Rowberry was a staple at Cardiff, until he recently landed his first managerial post at his hometown club. Newport County. James was kind enough to speak to VFTN en route to Morecambe last week, on his time at Cardiff and his new vocation. Congratulations on the new job. I went to a Newport County […]
Mehmet Dalman may be honest to a fault, but don’t shoot the messenger
My first encounter with Mehmet Dalman was on January 8th 2015, at a meeting arranged to discuss a return to Cardiff playing in blue. In many respects, it was a masterclass. The wheels were clearly already in motion and Dalman himself, while never admitting as much, did concede that he never attends a meeting that […]