Wales is celebrating after beating Ukraine 1-0 in the European playoffs and qualifying for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. After having had a couple of good European Championships in the last two editions, the missing piece for the team was qualifying for a world cup. The team led by Robert Page has restored hope to a country that has not seen its team in the biggest football competition for 64 years.
1958 was the first and the last time that Wales had qualified for a World Cup, a competition in which they also did not do badly. That World Cup was played in Sweden, with a Germany that had just won the last World Cup and with the presence of some countries that no longer exist as such today. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union competed as three teams, something unthinkable today.
Wales, in addition to playing the World Cup, qualified for the elimination phase after finishing second in the group of Sweden, Hungary and Mexico. The only thing that when going to the next phase, they had the bad luck to face a great Brazilian team that ended up winning the competition. A goal from Pelé would end Wales’ dream and it is the last World Cup match that the Welsh team has played to date.
The 1958 World Cup will be remembered as the first title for Brazil, which also won the next one, played in Chile, but in Wales it is remembered as the last time that their team participated in the world’s greatest competition. Now, a great project led by Gareth Bale has brought Wales back to the top.
Although they have not been lucky in the World Cups, the last two European Championships in Wales have been really good. that of 2016, played in France, was the highest the team has ever reached. Wales went through to the next round as first in the group, and in the round of 16 they met their neighbors Northern Ireland. Bale and company continued to surprise when they eliminated Belgium, a team with great potential, 3-1. The Welsh dream ended in the semi-finals, when they faced champions Portugal. In 2020 they repeated participation and also advanced to the elimination phase, but this time they did not go beyond the round of 16.
This may be the last World Cup for their star, Gareth Bale, and from then on his chances of re-qualifying will be considerably reduced, but at the moment there are no Welshmen thinking about the future. All eyes are on November 21, when the World Cup in Qatar begins.
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