Rob Page admits Wales' squad needs to be at full strength to compete with international football's elite.
The Red Dragons were relegated from the top tier of the Nations League following a 1-0 defeat to Poland at Cardiff City Stadium in what was their final match ahead of the global showpiece in Qatar.
The hosts were without key stars including Aaron Ramsey, Joe Allen, Ben Davies, Harry Wilson, Ethan Ampadu and Chris Mepham for the visit of Poland on Sunday night. However, their focus now switches to the World Cup, and Page remains confident his side can battle it out with the best sides if they have their star men available.
"For us to compete at the top, top level we're going to need every player fit and available and playing well," he said after the match. "That's nothing against the rest of the squad - they're brilliant, to a man - but we need our best players on the pitch.
"When you have injuries and suspensions on the back of a big effort against Belgium, you have to learn lessons from that and take that into the World Cup.
"There are a lot of positives to take out of the performance, it's just that final pass and final shot – that's where we need to improve and get better. We have to be ruthless with it as, against top teams, chances are few and far between.
"We've created a lot of chances tonight against a very good team but we haven't been ruthless enough. If you had said to me at the start of June that we would qualify for the World Cup and have it go down to one game to win to stay in League A, I would have taken that."
Brennan Johnson and Daniel James were among those to have chances to bulge the net for Wales against Poland, although captain Gareth Bale went the closest to scoring when he headed against the crossbar in injury-time.
And the Los Angeles star admitted Wales need to be more clinical if they are to gain positive results against the big guns of international football.
"It was a positive performance going into the World Cup and we will take a lot of positives from it," said the 33-year-old. "The campaign has been difficult because we had to concentrate on the World Cup play-off final and we had to prioritise that in the opening games.
"But we are competing against these big teams, only losing by one goal and we're always in the game. If we can be a bit more clinical, with a bit more luck, it would be different."
Wales now have just shy of two months to wait until they play in a World Cup for the first time since 1958. Page's outfit take on the United States of America in their first group stage match on November 21 before facing Iran four days later.
They round off the group phase of the tournament against England on November 29, and Page said World Cup qualification was clearly the focus in the bigger picture as he thanked the Red Wall for their support during what has been a hectic period.
"I thought the fans were tremendous again," he added. "They stayed behind at the end. They'll be hurting as well of course, nobody wants to lose games of football.
"But the bigger picture is we have qualified for a World Cup. Strip the emotion out of it, I appreciate their support throughout to see the players off to Qatar, the next time we'll see us is in Qatar, it's credit to the supporters and we really appreciate that."
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