Wales aren't scared of Portugal, says James

The Rennes midfielder has told BBC Sport that Wales will approach the trip to Portugal with confidence rather than caution, even with a squad thinned out ahead of one of the toughest fixtures on the calendar.

James didn't dress it up as anything other than what it is: a mismatch on reputation. Portugal come into the game with a squad stacked with players operating at the top end of European club football, the kind of depth most nations in this competition simply don't have. Wales, by contrast, arrive without the numbers they'd want, though the exact list of unavailable players wasn't detailed in James's comments.

No fear, says James

"Wales will have no fear in Portugal," James said, setting the tone for how Craig Bellamy's side plan to treat the occasion. It's the kind of line that gets printed as a headline because it's meant to. Underdogs don't get to pick the opponent, but they do get to pick the attitude, and James is choosing not to let the gap in star power become a psychological one as well.

That matters more than it might look on a results sheet. Nations League A is not a competition where Wales get to hide: it's built specifically to put mid-ranked nations in front of the continent's best, and a side that walks into Portugal already flinching tends to get the scoreline the name suggests. James's message is less about tactics and more about mindset, which is often the only lever an underdog squad actually controls.

The Goliath in the room

Portugal's individual quality isn't in question, and nobody in the Wales camp is pretending otherwise. What James is pushing back against is the idea that talent gaps translate automatically into fear, and that a patched-together Welsh squad has already lost the game before kickoff. Whether that defiance survives ninety minutes in front of a Portuguese crowd is exactly why this fixture is worth watching.

For Wales, there's little to lose in Nations League A terms and plenty to gain in belief if they can rattle a side of Portugal's calibre, even briefly. James has set the terms of engagement. Thursday will show whether the rest of the squad plays to them.