Coleman offers Euro 2016 assurances after Wales contract talks stall

Wales manager Chris Coleman insists there is no chance he will leave his position before Euro 2016 despite limited progress in contract negotiations with the country’s football association.

Coleman has guided Wales to their first major finals since the 1958 World Cup, yet discussions over an extended deal “never went very far” when the 45-year-old opened talks with the FAW this week.

The former Fulham boss, whose deal expires after the Euros, concedes the two parties are “apart” but has previously expressed a desire to resolve his future before Wales head to France for the tournament that starts in June.

However, he stressed that the lack of progress in talks will not impact Wales’ plans for Euro 2016, even if his ideal timescale for a resolution is not met.

“Let’s say I was not going to be the Welsh manager, I am not going to go before the tournament starts,” Coleman is quoted as saying by The Mirror.

Coleman, who has put contract talks to one side to focus on friendlies against Northern Ireland and Ukraine, is eager to lay down firm foundations, regardless of whether it is he or someone else who eventually builds on them.

“If it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience this summer, we haven’t done our job and I haven’t done my job,” he added. “It can’t be a one-off – it’s got to be more.

“We have qualified on my watch but it’s about how we take it forward, how we do it again and we are not sitting here in 20 years’ time, saying, ‘France was great. Isn’t it a shame?’

“Then we would look at it and think we never built properly on what we had. How do you do it again? That’s really important. It’s not enough for me or anyone else connected to us as a one-off to qualify. If we think like that it’s a waste of time.

“We have to think how can we push on, get better and do it again and do it again in the World Cup.”