Rob Page proud of progress as Wales draw Belgium, Poland and Netherlands at Europe's top table

Rob Page has lead Wales to Euro 2020, the Nations League top division and within touching distance of the World Cup Credit: PA

Wales coach Rob Page believes his team should be proud to be among the top-ranked teams in the Nations League as they learnt who they would play in League A.

Page believes being drawn with Belgium, Holland and Poland will aid his side’s improvement after a decade in which Wales have grown to be one of Europe’s premier footballing nations.

The Dragons have qualified for two successive European Championships, reaching the semi-finals in 2016, and are two games away from qualifying for the 2022 Fifa World Cup

Speaking after the Nationas League draw on Thursday (December 16), Page said: “I hope all the supporters at home watching it were really, really proud waiting for that League A – the top division. Waiting for the top teams to come out and us being part of that.

“We’ve come a long way in recent years but we are not here by fluke, we deserve to be in this top division.

“If we want to evolve and improve and develop our young players, and our senior players as well, we have to play against the top teams in Europe. And the teams who we have been drawn against and the other top teams in the competition will certainly do that.

Rob Page said his side are not resting on their laurels Credit: PA

“As players, coaches and managers you want to play against the best in Europe and we are certainly doing that against these teams.

“Four or five years ago if you’d said to Wales fans we’d get to the semi-finals of the Euros then they would have said ‘yeah, alright’. But we did it and we’ve used the finance and experience we got from that to build.

“We’ve had two consecutive qualifications for the Euros. We want to keep evolving and keep improving, we don’t want this ‘Will they qualify? won’t they qualify?’. We want to qualify for major tournaments regularly and we want to get into the knock-out stages.

“We did it in 2016 and we did it again last year and we are two games away from hopefully qualifying for a World Cup. If we don’t then we will be very disappointed, but if we do then that won’t surprise a lot of people either.

“So we are in that transitional stage and playing teams of the quality of Belgium, Holland and Poland will mean we keep progressing.”

On renewing their rivalry with Belgium, who Wales also played in their World Cup qualifying group, Page said: “We fully respect the talent and the individuals they have got but we showed against them that we can more than handle that.”