The manager who will stand in front of the visiting bench at Wembley Stadium on Thursday night is a changed man.
Some may find it hard to recognise the enfant terrible who was once a scourge of referees, a connoisseur of conflict and a bubbling font of snarling, seething angst. The truth is that Craig Bellamy barely recognises himself.
‘I’ve found a level of peace,’ Bellamy says, as he sits with his head slightly bowed in a room at the Welsh FA’s Centre of Excellence in the Vale of Glamorgan, a few miles outside Cardiff.