Is Welsh football on the brink of its peak?
Photo by Lewis Mitchell [lewismitchellphoto.photoshelter.com]
Megan Feringa
The conversation is peaks. More specifically, whether Welsh football has struck its.
The assertion hits like a freshly banged fist, one that only beggars a similarly bellicose fist in reply. But before you go embarking on that suffocating journey down you’re wrong street, a consideration.
The first verbal fist might have a point. There is a general consensus, as much in life as in sport, that it is far easier to be on the verge of something than to be it.
Wales fans know that frontier more intimately than most would ever care to admit. You do not routinely fail to reach a major tournament for more than half a century without cozying up real close to that boundary (and developing a potent defence system of self-deprecation).
But over the last decade, Wales has come to slowly eclipse that sorry state of existence, epitomised best by Euro2016, at which football’s perennial sufferers did not simply appear for the first time on a world stage since 1958 but – in baffling schadenfreude to everyone there – triumphed to the point that only Cristiano Ronaldo and eventual champions Portugal could douse their flames in the semi-finals.
Levels and all that.
It was, however, still dangerously naive to extrapolate that a burgeoning Wales era was officially finding its football legs after such a summer. Flashes in pans happen. Miracles are miracles because they do not occur at regular intervals.
Fast-forward six years, and with the help of a recurring appearance at last summer’s European Championship, at which Wales reached the knock-out stages, the notion that the initial French venture was no mere blip holds its fair share of water. Toss in Wales’ topping their Nations League group in the fall of 2020 – in which Wales drew only once and conceded a lone goal, earning a promotion to League A – and just three losses in Wales’ last 19 competitive matches – to Belgium, Italy and Denmark –, and Wales (whisper it) suddenly cut the footballing figure of an international side worth, at the very least, filing under One to Watch.
But for all of 2016’s red-kissed frisson and the subsequent flight path into football relevancy, there is still football’s ultimate acid test looming brazenly in the Qatari sunlight: a first World Cup since 1958.
The time stewing between the bygone era of a last appearance and present day is edging into slapstick territory. The last time Wales kicked a World Cup football, Jerry Lee Lewis topped the UK music charts with “Great Balls of Fire”. Man had not yet landed on the moon. The UK had only just put its first commercial microwave on the shelves, next to the first pair of commercial pantyhose. It was the year of MacMillan, Eisenhower, the ‘Cha Cha’ and the invention of hula hoops. Coloured broadcasts? What do you think this is? The Jetsons? (Of course not, that 2-D family didn’t exist for another four years).
Lifting Welsh football out of its outmoded mire and into the modern era has been the raison d’etre of this Wales squad over the last decade and come 5 June, they will be as close as ever to completing their mission.
And there. There is the peak our first fist was so vehemently on about.
Qualifying for Euro2016 was a starting pistol, but what kind of race Wales would be running remained blissfully aloof. Instead, Lyon was laced with zero expectations. Wales were happy to be there, to be standing at the gate and not asked for proof of ID.
A World Cup qualification has the potential to reap an even greater all-consuming thrill. Partly because of the tragicomic history still underpinning everything. Mystifying levels of suffering form the bedrock of Welsh football’s topographical map.
But also because this time, as opposed to 2016, there is a palpable sense of an end as much as a beginning.
Expectations are higher, and those who fired the starting pistol are in their final lap. Gareth Bale’s time in a Wales shirt looms ever more with a visible expiration date. Aaron Ramsey and Joe Allen do not look far behind. There is a general understanding that this World Cup bid is a last-dance affair for Wales’ holy trinity. The rest of the vanguard that launched the country on its original odyssey have trickled to the fringes. The trio is, as ever, the last of the men standing.
That is not to doubt the sincerity with which Wales are striving to sustain their progressive evolution. Bale, Ramsey and Allen stubbornly maintain that the rollicking on-pitch successes will not be abandoned once they depart, not with the talent pouring into the ranks and the expectation levels set.
To paraphrase Bale for a moment: Have you seen Brennan Johnson?
Rather, the question of peaks is a call to pause, to look around and soak it all in. If they do it – it being finally checking off the historically un-checkable World Cup on Bale’s career goals list – then perhaps the peaks argument is not as misplaced as it initially comes across.
Barring another 64-year purgatory, reams of cruel near-misses, the emergence of two transcending superstars to forge a wholly new international identity and the most exquisite free kick the international stage has arguably ever seen, will there be a culmination so overwhelming cathartic as this?
The road to get here has been long and ugly and beautiful, but it is, at its core, impossible to duplicate. Like its legends leading the charge, it is inimitable.
Put it this way. If Wales win a ticket to November’s World Cup, very few can claim they remember the last time. It will certainly have the look and feel of a very, very high peak.