AARON Ramsey harbours no-ill feeling towards Wales boss Chris Coleman for stripping him of the Wales captaincy, insisting he couldn’t be prouder to be part of the historic Dragons.
The Arsenal midfielder scored his tenth goal for Wales in Tuesday’s 2-0 win against Andorra, which confirmed a second-placed finish for them in Euro Qualifying Group B.
Coleman will now be the first manager to take Wales to a major tournament since the 1950s, but he’ll do so with Swansea’s Ashley Williams as his captain in France next summer at the European Championships.
Coleman opted to replace Ramsey with Williams following Wales’ dreadful 6-1 loss to Serbia in Novi Sad in the qualification campaign for the last World Cup and neither player has looked back since.
"Aaron is a super player. Go back to the last campaign when I changed the captaincy, it could have gone horribly wrong,” Coleman explained in his press conference after the Andorra game.
“A lesser man than Aaron might have spat his dummy out and not performed, but at the time he accepted it really well and he has gone on in this campaign and just like everybody else he has tried to do everything we have asked of him. He has always put the group first, put Wales first, like they all have."
Ramsey admitted it could’ve been a tough time.
“Yeah, well, there was no point in throwing my toys,” he said. “As soon as he made his decision, he made his decision, and I had to accept that he is the manager.
“I just had to get my head down and work hard, and you know maybe I will get it back one day and I will be proud to do that and hopefully can achieve that again.
In the meantime it is great to be a part of this.
“I try to be a leader anyway. I am very experienced for my age and definitely playing in the big games for Arsenal in the Champions League only helps me in these sort of games for Wales.
“Hopefully I can continue that and continue to have an influence on games, especially in France.
“Against the best teams in Europe some experience will be vital and hopefully I can have an influence on the team to be successful and not just go there to make up the numbers.”
Ramsey joined those who are saying Wales will have nothing to fear next summer in France.
“It will be tough, we are the bottom seed so we will be up against the best teams in Europe, but we are optimistic, we are a team who have been quite dangerous, we don’t concede many goals, so who knows?” he commented.
“As a group of players we have been together for many years, we get on, we understand each other, the team spirit is as good as any I’ve known, we work hard for each other, and we have players who can score or create something. We are a team who are quite tough to face.”
Ramsey is thrilled to have reached double figures in terms of goals and is expecting to improve that side of his game even further.
Of course, I have been wanting to reach that mark for a few games and to finally achieve that, to get into double figures, is a great personal achievement for me but hopefully there are more to come as well,” he said.
“I have struggled a bit at the beginning of the season with goals but hopefully now that will settle me down and I can carry on throughout the season.”
