David Brooks rues missed chances as Wales fail to end winless run in summer camp

David Brooks says Wales must find a clinical edge to prosper in the Nations League.

Craig Bellamy’s Wales squad will spend the summer at home licking their wounds having fallen at the World Cup play-off hurdle in March.

Wales signed off the season with two underwhelming June friendlies – a 1-1 home draw against World Cup-bound Ghana and Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Romania in Bucharest.

The Dragons will return to action in Nations League A with fixtures against Portugal, Denmark and Norway in late September and early October.

“There’s a lot of positives and negatives from the two games and some sneak into both,” said Bournemouth forward Brooks, who registered his seventh Wales goal in Bucharest with a sweetly struck volley.

“We’ve had a lot of the ball but we haven’t really penetrated enough or created a lot of chances.

“We didn’t score the amount of goals over the two games which I feel we had enough of the ball to do.

“It’s a bit of a positive to have the ball, but we’ve got to do a bit more when we do have it.

“We’ve managed to get into some good positions with the possession we’ve had. And us attackers know we have to do a little bit more, create more golden opportunities and put those chances away.”

Wales missed out on playing at a second successive World Cup when losing a play-off semi-final shoot-out to Bosnia and Herzegovina in March.

Brooks rejected the idea that Wales are nursing a World Cup hangover, but they have not won any of their four games in 2026 and now face a potentially tricky autumn.

He said: “We want to compete at the highest level. We wish we were at the World Cup, but obviously our performances didn’t allow that.

“We only have ourselves to blame and it’s bitterly disappointing not to be in America.

“But we dust ourselves off and go again in September.

“We’ve got four tough games in that period and all the lads want to try and put things right. Put on good performances against some of Europe’s best.

“We’ve had some good games to get used to the system more, but there’s definitely stuff to improve on.”