Wales at Euro 2016 - What madness
A night that will (probably) never be beaten
Read part one here
Unless Chris Gunter Jr scores a last-minute winner against Brazil in the World Cup final, or Owain Glyndwr comes back to life, scores a hat-trick at Wembley then declares independence at full time, we’ve probably already experienced the greatest night in the history of Welsh football.
You already know what night I’m talking about, but I’m going to say it anyway. Wales 3 - Belgium 1. Cymru 3 - Gwlad Belg 1. Whatever language you say it in, it still feels damn good to hear. It’s a result that is literally a part of me forever, with the score, date, and the stadium tattooed onto my arm.
10 years ago today, Wales shocked the footballing world.
Before I tell that story, we have to mention Paris.
After a magnificent victory over Russia in Toulouse, our stay in France had been extended.
Thanks to the rule change that made it possible for 3rd place teams to get through, I had been cautiously optimistic that we’d make this stage, and had thankfully booked a few extra days off work. What I definitely hadn’t booked was transport to and accommodation in Paris, which is where the group winners would head next.
With the majority of affordable places to stay booked up by expectant England fans (haha), I ended up in a place called ‘Ideal Hotel’. It did not live up to the name.
My room was up 7 flights of stairs, and had a layer of dust that made me suspect the last person to stay there might have been one of the Welsh players who had been part of the team last time we qualified in 1958. The bed was so uncomfortable it probably broke the Geneva Convention, and the shower was, unfathomably, located in reception.
I arrived at the same time as an Icelandic fan who took one look around the reception and left to go somewhere else. Unfortunately, my budget was already stretched thin, and I had no option but to stay.
Our opponents for the Last 16 were Northern Ireland, with the media drooling at the prospect of a ‘British Derby’, despite the vast majority of our fanbase holding views on Britain that probably mean they’re on some sort of watchlist.
There was an added pressure though, in that this was the first match at the tournament where I truly felt like we were favourites to win. Having gone into the tournament just hoping to see us score a goal, I was now in a position where I would genuinely be disappointed if we didn’t make the quarter-finals. Football is mad, eh.
I had already purchased my tickets before the tournament began, buying the option which secured me a ticket to every game that Wales played, even if we reached the final. I’d like to say I don’t know why I had even bothered selecting that option, but it was because I had paid for them after spending a Wednesday night at my favourite Amsterdam nightclub, a place where the walls were covered in tinfoil and questionable moral choices were made. This nightclub was knocked down in 2019 after being found guilty of massive tax fraud, and it ranks as one of the most tragic moments of my life.
Still, it meant my ticket was sorted, and when a spare came my way I could offer it to my dad. He had travelled back to Wales after the opening game, but after taking roughly 10 seconds to convince him he should travel back to France, he was on a Eurostar to Paris that was so expensive my eventual inheritance is now probably 50p and a signed picture of Sam Vokes.
Reunited, we spent the morning of the game having a couple of beers around Paris, before heading to PSG’s wonderful home ground. There were definitely more Wales fans in attendance than there were Northern Irish, but there was still a great number of them singing the song of the summer “Will Grigg’s on fire”. If I recall rightly, he didn’t even play a single minute at the tournament.
The 90 minutes that followed were some of the worst ever played in the history of football, and neither side could really have complained if the head of UEFA stepped in after 60 minutes and said we were both disqualified for crimes against the beautiful game.
Thankfully that didn’t happen, and on 75 minutes the stalest of stalemates was finally broken. At this moment in time, no Welsh player had ever scored a winning goal in a knockout match at a tournament…and that wouldn’t change, as the latest biggest goal in Welsh history was scored by Northern Ireland defender Gareth McAuley.
In fairness he didn’t have much choice - as a superb cross from Gareth Bale was going to be tapped into an empty net by Hal Robson-Kanu if he didn’t do something to try and intervene. If Hal was a little bit sad that night that he didn’t get to have his big moment, he wouldn’t be feeling like that for long…
Deep into injury time, Northern Ireland won a corner, with even the goalkeeper going up (and immediately elbowing Joe Allen in the face) for one last stressful moment in a 90 minutes that had been full of them. Of all people, it was Gareth Bale who headed it clear. The final whistle blew, and the Welsh team of 2016 transcended from heroes into immortals. For the first time ever, we had won a knockout game at a major tournament!
It was party time in the stands, as the Wales fans sang and danced to “Will Grigg’s on fire” as the opposition fans trooped out of the stadium.
Once we eventually left, we would be treated to a moment that was almost as good as the winning goal. With thousands of Welsh fans in the mood to celebrate, there was a shortage of pubs near the ground for people to squeeze into. Some entrepreneurial locals were making the most of this by selling beers in shopping carts, something which was apparently illegal, as they were being stopped by the police. One French policeman shouted “FREE BEER!”, deciding to give away the supply he had seized from one unlucky seller.
I had never ran so fast in my life. Nobody who had ever seen me play football would describe me as ‘pacy’, but in that moment I would have beaten Mbappe over 100 metres. I reached the shopping cart full of treasure in time, able to grab as many cans as I could carry before various other sprinting Welsh fans arrived.
With the cans close to being finished, we heard that the Eiffel Tower had been lit up in Welsh colours. That was something we couldn’t miss, and we decided to see it in style by jumping in a ‘cycle taxi’. A price of 15 Euro was agreed, and we enjoyed the last of our beers as we made our way along to river to one of Europe’s most iconic sights, lit up in Welsh red. We got out and savoured the moment, with not even the revelation that the price was apparently 15 Euros each spoiling the moment.
We later found out that it was actually red in honour of Poland who had also won that day, but honestly, who gives a fuck?
It was quite a night at the bars near the Eiffel Tower, with the lasting memory being two guys trying to drive a flatbed truck down a street packed with Welsh fans, only for it to be swarmed by people who had drunk enough to forget that falling off a moving truck really hurts. 50 odd Welsh blokes dancing on top of a truck should have been the maddest thing I’ve seen in a while, but in this glorious summer, it didn’t even make top 10.
“Don’t take me home” was the anthem of the night, and apart from my dad who had to get the train in the morning, we really weren’t going home.
It was Lille next, and as we would discover the following night, Belgium would again be the opposition. Not only would we be taking on the best team in Europe and the 2nd best team in the world according to FIFA’s rankings, but we would be doing so at a stadium that was just a 30 minute drive from the Belgium border. They had battered Hungary 4-0 in the previous round, and everything pointed to this game being a moment of “Right Wales, you’ve had your fun - but the big boys are here now”.
This was as close as it comes to having an away game at a major tournament without facing the hosts. The capacity of the stadium was just over 50,000, and roughly 40,000 of those were expectant Belgium fans. The Wales following now was mostly reduced to overly optimistic idiots like me who had purchased the tournament tickets, or people who had been lucky after hours in the resale queue. Whatever price they had paid to get there (and in my case, however angry they had made their boss by telling them they weren’t coming back yet) it was about to be worth it.
1st July, 2016.
Our Welsh heroes stepped out into a cauldron of noise, with the Belgium supporters hugely confident that they were finally about to lift a trophy. 10 years later, and they’re still being made ‘dark horses’ before every tournament, before an inevitable loss to someone like Tajikistan in the second round.
Most of their fans had been very friendly and easy to get on with, but one had told us it was going to be 5-0 Belgium by half time. Sadly, we didn’t see him again after the game.
For a while, it looked as though his prediction might come true. Belgium were all over us in the first 15 minutes, and went 1-0 up through an absolute screamer from Nainggolan. As that goal went in, I just sighed and accepted that the journey was over, hoping that we didn’t go out with a battering. Even if we did, it had already been the greatest summer ever.
It was about to get better.
After going 1-0 down, Wales were absolutely brilliant. Despite trailing, we were playing the Belgians off the park. A team that contained Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku was getting mugged off by Chris Gunter, Neil Taylor and Hal Robson-Kanu.
In the 32nd minute, it happened.
Aaron Ramsey whipped in a corner, Ashley Williams got his head to it, and it was 1-1. I had never celebrated a goal like that before in my life. The on field celebration to this goal is iconic, with Williams sprinting to the dugout to get mobbed by the entire squad. I didn’t see a second of it, because I was upside down about four rows of seats away from where I had started, just screaming and screaming. The tournament had started with us going 1-0 down to Andorra in qualifying after a few minutes, and now we were here.
You know what’s coming.
At this point of my life I had spent years following Wales all over Europe, singing about Hal Robson-Kanu in dodgy pubs and crowded streets a long way from home. He was a cult figure, one who always gave his best for Wales no matter what. Even his biggest fan (which was probably me) would admit he wasn’t blessed with 10% of the talent of the star men Bale and Ramsey, but it didn’t matter.
For 10 seconds on that night that defied belief, Hal Robson-Kanu turned into Messi, Maradona, Pele, Ronaldo, George Best and Johan Cruyff all combined into one.
It’s a goal I can see in my head without even having to watch it. The video of it has 720k views on YouTube at the time of writing, and I think there’s a good chance I’m responsible for at least 10% of those.
A long ball forward finds Aaron Ramsey perfectly, who chips a perfect pass into the box at the feet of Hal. He’s surrounded by four defenders, but Neil Taylor is unmarked with a free shot at goal. Pass it to Neil Hal, pass it!
Oh my god.
He pulls out a Cruyff turn so good that the move is now called ‘The Robson-Kanu’ in Wales, and smashes the ball past arguably the best goalkeeper in the world.
I don’t even know what I did for the next minute, but at the end of it, my phone was broken and so was my brain. We were 2-1 up in a quarter final, and Hal Robson-Kanu had just scored a goal that would be nominated for the Puskas Award. Every miserable work day since then where I’ve been stuck listening to someone go on about OKR’s, KPI’s or WTF’s, I can happily zone out and think back to that moment. If you’ve worked with me since then, there’s at least an 80% chance I’ve been thinking about Euro 2016 when we were talking. Sorry.
There were 35 minutes left when Hal scored his goal from heaven, and I spent every one of those minutes waiting for it all to go wrong. Surely this wasn’t actually going to happen? This never happens, not to Wales. Right?
Wrong.
85 minutes played, and we’re so close. So, so close. If we lost now it would be worse than the 5-0 defeat it felt like we were going to receive after 15 minutes, and despite being the least religious man in the world, I was making all sorts of imaginary deals with God in the stands. Just win this game and I’ll never ask for anything else in my life. Just please let us hang on, and I’ll stop going to tinfoil covered nightclubs until 4am when I’ve got work the next day (I didn’t).
Chris Gunter has the ball on the right hand side, and everyone is screaming at him to run it to the corner and waste another few minutes. Manager Chris Coleman even utters the immortal words “Don’t cross that fucking ball, Christopher!”
He does cross it, and Sam Vokes flies through the dark Lille sky like a salmon, heading the ball into the net and sealing the greatest moment in Welsh football history.
There’s very nearly a pitch invasion, with the Welsh crowd surging forward in a way you usually only see with Gremio’s iconic avalanche celebration. I’m in a different postcode to where I was five seconds earlier, jumping on anyone I recognise and battering my shins off pretty much every seat in the stadium. My phone is already broken, but now it’s checking itself in to therapy for the trauma it’s been through. Even when I dreamed about what Euro 2016 would be like for weeks before the tournament started, I could never have come up with something like this.
Belgium don’t have time to come back, and they know it. Their fans begin to leave, as the outnumbered but never outsung Welsh fans enjoy a moment literally beyond our wildest dreams.
A miraculous comeback to 3-3 never comes, and we’ve won. We’re in a semi-final. If Wales win their next two matches, they are champions of Europe. I felt like I was floating on a cloud for the next few hours. I saw friends who had stood next to me when we had lost 6-1 to Serbia, and now I was standing next to them after making the last four at the Euros.
The locals had very much been supporting to Wales, and there was another surreal moment in a summer filled with them as we arrived back to the city centre on the Metro. As we walk off the train, we’re given a guard of honour by cheering locals, that lasted all the way through the station. Such was the reception that you’d think the key goals were scored by me and my mate George, and this was probably the moment that the true magnitude of what we as a nation had achieved sunk in.
It was a heavy night in Lille, to the extent that I woke up the next morning in the wrong hotel 125 miles away in Paris.
Wales 3 - Belgium 1 did not just change Welsh football, I truly believe it changed Wales. Support for Welsh independence has surged since then, and this year we finally got a Plaid Cymru government in the Senedd. Are Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey, Hal Robson-Kanu, and Sam Vokes the reason this happened? I’m not saying they are, but I’m also not saying they aren’t.
It wasn’t just my life that this summer changed. I had had 2 tickets to France v Ireland in the Last 16 that I was unable to use due to Wales progressing. I decided to give them free of charge to my friend Jess, who invited along a guy she had met recently. A few years later, I spoke at their wedding.
We didn’t win the Euros, a 2-0 defeat in the semi-final to Portugal a few days later finally bringing the adventure of a lifetime to an end. I went home, and eventually got the courage to check my bank account. I had 7 Euros left in my life savings, and it was worth it. I finally went back to work, and had 9,000 unread emails. That was less worth it.
I got my first tattoo, taken from the headline of the main French sports newspaper the next day. Quelle Folie ! it reads - What madness!
Here’s a photo of it at the next Euros as we beat Turkey in Azerbaijan, in what was once again effectively an away game at a major tournament. We also went to the World Cup, becoming the nation with the longest ever wait between appearances at the biggest show in football. We stunk the place up in all 3 games, but at least we were there.
None of this would have happened without that summer in France.
Quelle Folie, indeed.