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Why Euro 2016 Run Has to Be Seen as Just the Start for Beaten but Proud Wales
Published: July 7, 2016
The battle for relevance, never mind prominence, on the international football stage is one that has long since consumed Welsh footballers of several vintages.
Since the country’s previous qualification for a major tournament in 1958, Wales teams full of terrifically talented players—often ones plying their trade at the top clubs in Britain—have fallen short in their attempts to rub shoulders with the elite. At Euro 2016, the Welsh didn’t just rub shoulders with the elite, they put their hands on their shoulders and leapfrogged them into the last four.
Surpassing the achievements of the likes of Spain, England, Italy and, of course, Belgium—thrillingly in that astonishing quarter-final in Lille—Wales created memories that will stay with their supporters for a lifetime, but that lifetime now has to start making experiences such as these less infrequent.
“Please don’t take me home” was a refrain often heard from the travelling Welsh fans while out in France, but it wasn’t their home towns or their families that they were trying to hide from, it was something more.
“Home” for the Welsh football team and supporters has been decades of underachievement, of near misses and of being treated as an afterthought in their own nation, which is widely perceived as being too obsessed with the national sport, rugby union, to bother with what is going on in the round-ball game.
But what has gone on is remarkable.
Less than five years ago, Wales sat 117th in the FIFA world rankings, a position that Niger, Thailand and Swaziland all currently hold together.
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Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football
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