'It's an ugly and beautiful thing': Wales, World Cup and bucket hat unite a nation
Each generation of Welsh football fans find their own heartbreaking moment. I was not alive to witness the great robbery of 1977 when a handball decision by Maradona sent Scotland to the 1978 World Cup at our expense and I was a little too young to see my hopes and my dreams brutally crushed by Paul Bodin's missed penalty of 1993, which would have taken us to USA 94. Instead, I had to wait until 2003 at the Millennium Stadium, watching Wales take on Russia for a place to the 2004 Euros. It was such a lackluster match that our fans started chanting "USA, USA, USA" as if all we were passionate about was the Cold War. In the end, this chant turned out to be oddly prescient. Days after our 0-1 loss, one of the Russian players, Yegor Titov, tested positive for Bromantan, a Cold War-era drug believed to have been used by the Russian military to boost stamina. of his troops. The Welsh FA protested to UEFA but the result was not overturned and so a new era of Welsh fans had their defining moment of pain.
Looking back, I can at least say that this match was memorable. There were emotions, intrigues and betrayals. Because the truth is that for every time Wales failed with heroic misfortune, there have been many more failures with no anecdote or narrative. The only reason I know I saw Wales lose 0-1 to Georgia in 1995 is because when I got to school the next day my friends said they had seen on television. Apparently the camera zoomed in on me eating a huge, flabby burger my dad bought at halftime. As I bit down on one side of the bun, the other side split open and all the ketchup and juices oozed out so that - and here my friends may have editorialized - it looked like a boxer was being punched in the mouth, all the strings dangling with blood and saliva. What I mean is that I have no memory of what happened on the pitch that day. Apparently Vinnie Jones was shown a red card and Georgi Kinkladze scored a stylish token. I couldn't comment. For many years watching the Welsh football team was like that - an exercise in forgetting. These are nights where no dreams were made.
Each generation of Welsh football fans find their own heartbreaking moment. I was not alive to witness the great robbery of 1977 when a handball decision by Maradona sent Scotland to the 1978 World Cup at our expense and I was a little too young to see my hopes and my dreams brutally crushed by Paul Bodin's missed penalty of 1993, which would have taken us to USA 94. Instead, I had to wait until 2003 at the Millennium Stadium, watching Wales take on Russia for a place to the 2004 Euros. It was such a lackluster match that our fans started chanting "USA, USA, USA" as if all we were passionate about was the Cold War. In the end, this chant turned out to be oddly prescient. Days after our 0-1 loss, one of the Russian players, Yegor Titov, tested positive for Bromantan, a Cold War-era drug believed to have been used by the Russian military to boost stamina. of his troops. The Welsh FA protested to UEFA but the result was not overturned and so a new era of Welsh fans had their defining moment of pain.
Looking back, I can at least say that this match was memorable. There were emotions, intrigues and betrayals. Because the truth is that for every time Wales failed with heroic misfortune, there have been many more failures with no anecdote or narrative. The only reason I know I saw Wales lose 0-1 to Georgia in 1995 is because when I got to school the next day my friends said they had seen on television. Apparently the camera zoomed in on me eating a huge, flabby burger my dad bought at halftime. As I bit down on one side of the bun, the other side split open and all the ketchup and juices oozed out so that - and here my friends may have editorialized - it looked like a boxer was being punched in the mouth, all the strings dangling with blood and saliva. What I mean is that I have no memory of what happened on the pitch that day. Apparently Vinnie Jones was shown a red card and Georgi Kinkladze scored a stylish token. I couldn't comment. For many years watching the Welsh football team was like that - an exercise in forgetting. These are nights where no dreams were made.
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