adminBORDEAUX. – Gareth Bale and Wales will play their inaugural European Championship soccer finals game ever today mixing the joy of a special day with nerves over whether they can get back to winning ways. The Group B game will be the first time that a Wales team has appeared at a major tournament since June 19, 1958 in Gothenburg, Sweden, when a 17-year-old Pele settled a World Cup quarter-final in Brazil’s favour and consigned the Welsh to the international wilderness.
The years in between have brought a succession of failed managerial regimes and agonising near-misses, but come kick-off, the call of the country’s long-suffering football fans will finally be answered.
“It has been a bit surreal being here, especially with Wales having not been there so long,” Bale told reporters at the team’s Dinard base in Brittany on Thursday. “Whenever there was a major championship on I would be sat at home, watching on TV, so to be involved is amazing. “I imagined qualifying. It was one of my dreams to do so, but to make dreams come true is not easy.”
Welsh dreams were realised last October when, despite a 2-0 defeat away to Bosnia-Hercegovina in their penultimate qualifying match, Chris Coleman’s side secured their place in France.
The final game, a 2-0 home win over Andorra, became a 90-minute party, as players, staff and fans united in celebration of the team’s feat and in memory of former manager Gary Speed, who committed suicide in 2011 after sowing the seeds of the side’s revival.
Jubilation, however, has given way to uncertainty in the months that have followed. Wales have failed to win any of their four subsequent friendlies, losing to the Netherlands, Ukraine and Sweden and drawing 1-1 with Northern Ireland.
Bale, though, had been absent until Sunday’s 3-0 loss to Sweden in Stockholm, where he came on as a second-half substitute. The Real Madrid forward’s return to the starting XI, as a free electron operating behind a lone striker in Coleman’s 3-5-1-1 formation, will give his team-mates and Wales’s fans an incalculable lift.
Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey will line up with him, but Joe Ledley is due to start on the bench after Coleman said it would be “reckless” to start him just a month after he fractured a fibula playing for Crystal Palace. Striker Hal Robson-Kanu, meanwhile, has declared himself fit to start despite sustaining an ankle injury in a pre-tournament training camp. – AFP
Online Reporter