The Summer Wales Changed: Euro 2016 Remembered
There are summers that you carry with you for the rest of your life. Summers that exist in a separate compartment of memory, brighter and more vivid than the years around them, that you return to not just with nostalgia but with genuine wonder that they actually happened.
For a generation of Welsh football fans, the summer of 2016 is that summer.
This is the story of how Wales went to France, exceeded every expectation, reached the semi final of a European Championship and changed Welsh football permanently in the process.
Before France
To understand what Euro 2016 meant you have to understand what came before it.
Wales had not qualified for a major tournament since the 1958 World Cup. Fifty eight years. An entire sporting lifetime. Generations of Welsh football fans had grown up following a team that consistently fell agonisingly short in qualifying.
Terry Yorath’s team in the early 1990s came closest. They needed a point from their final qualifier against Romania to reach the 1994 World Cup. Paul Bodin hit the crossbar from the penalty spot with the score at 1-1. Romania scored immediately. Wales were out. That moment haunted Welsh football for years. It became shorthand for the particular cruelty of following Wales.
Then Chris Coleman took over as manager in 2012 following the sudden and devastating death of Gary Speed, and something began to change.
The Qualifying Campaign
Wales were drawn in a qualifying group with Belgium, Bosnia, Israel, Cyprus and Andorra. Belgium were the favourites. Wales were expected to finish third or fourth at best.
What followed was one of the great qualifying campaigns in Welsh football history. Gareth Bale was at the peak of his powers. Aaron Ramsey was a Champions League winner. But the team was more than its two biggest names.
Ashley Williams was a commanding centre back and natural leader. Joe Allen controlled the tempo of games with a quiet authority that belied his slight frame. Neil Taylor, Chris Gunter, Ben Davies and Wayne Hennessey contributed to a defensive solidity that made Wales genuinely difficult to beat.
And then there was the belief. Something that Chris Coleman had built carefully over three years. A genuine conviction within the squad that they were good enough. That this was their time.
Wales won their group. They qualified for Euro 2016 as group winners, above Belgium. The first time Wales had qualified for a major tournament in 58 years. The scenes when qualification was confirmed — players in tears on the pitch, supporters who had waited their entire lives unable to fully process that it had actually arrived — were extraordinary.
Arriving in France
The Welsh squad travelled to France with a mixture of excitement and caution. Nobody was predicting anything beyond a decent showing. The draw had placed Wales in a group with England, Slovakia and Russia. Getting out of the group would be an achievement in itself.
The Welsh support arrived in France in extraordinary numbers. Tens of thousands of red shirts descended on Bordeaux for the opening game against Slovakia. The atmosphere in the city in the days before the match was unlike anything most Welsh fans had experienced before. A travelling community of people united by something that felt bigger than football.
Slovakia: Bordeaux, 11 June
Wales versus Slovakia. The first game. The moment that 58 years of waiting finally ended.
It was not a classic. Wales were nervous in the first half. But then Gareth Bale stepped up. A free kick, struck with that distinctive combination of power and precision, flew into the top corner. Wales were ahead. Hal Robson-Kanu added a second. Slovakia pulled one back late on. Wales held on.
They had won their first match at a major tournament since the 1958 World Cup. The celebrations were disproportionate in the best possible way. This was not a Champions League final. It was a group stage game against Slovakia. But the context made it feel like the most important result in Welsh football history. Because for so many people in red shirts in Bordeaux that evening it genuinely was.
Don’t Take Me Home rang out long after the final whistle. Four words that would come to define the whole summer — and that now live on a Don’t Take Me Home T-Shirt that every Welsh football fan will understand immediately.
England: Lens, 16 June
England versus Wales. The match that the whole of Britain had been talking about since the draw was made. England were heavy favourites. Wales were the plucky underdogs from next door.
What actually happened was one of the most dramatic games of the entire tournament. England took the lead through Daniel Sturridge. Wales equalised through Gareth Bale — a free kick that Hodgson later admitted no goalkeeper in the world could have stopped. Then, deep into stoppage time, substitute Sam Vokes rose to meet a Bale cross and glanced a header into the net.
Wales had beaten England. In a major tournament. For the first time since 1984. The explosion of noise from the Welsh end at that final whistle was extraordinary.
Russia: Toulouse, 20 June
Wales needed a point against Russia to guarantee qualification from the group. They won 3-0. Aaron Ramsey scored twice. Neil Taylor added a third. Wales topped the group. The scenes in Toulouse after the final whistle felt like a party that had been forty years in the planning.
Northern Ireland: Paris, 25 June
Wales versus Northern Ireland in the last sixteen carried an extra emotional weight. Two small nations who had both waited long years to reach this stage. Both sets of supporters knew what the other had been through to get there. Gareth McAuley scored an own goal to give Wales victory. Wales were in the quarter finals of a European Championship.
Belgium: Lille, 1 July
Belgium were the number one ranked team in the world. Hazard, Lukaku, De Bruyne, Fellaini. A squad assembled from the elite clubs of European football, widely expected to go deep into the tournament. Wales were given no chance by almost everyone outside of Wales.
What followed was the finest performance by a Welsh football team in living memory. Ashley Williams headed Wales in front from a corner. Then came the goal that will be replayed for as long as Welsh football is discussed. Hal Robson-Kanu, a Championship player at Reading, received the ball with his back to goal, executed a Cruyff turn through three Belgian defenders and finished with a composure that seemed impossible given the circumstances. Sam Vokes headed in a third from a Bale cross.
Wales won 3-1. They had beaten the number one team in the world. They were in the semi final of a European Championship. The reaction in Wales was unlike anything since the 1970s rugby Grand Slams.
Portugal: Lyon, 6 July
Portugal ended it. Cristiano Ronaldo scored. Nani added a second. Wales lost 2-0.
It was a deflating end to a tournament that had given so much. But even in defeat there was something. The knowledge that Wales had been here. That they had competed. That they had beaten Belgium and England and reached a semi final that nobody had given them any chance of reaching. Chris Coleman wept on the touchline. His players embraced each other with the look of people who knew they had done something significant even in defeat.
What Changed
Euro 2016 changed Welsh football in ways that are still being felt today.
It changed the relationship between the Welsh public and the national football team. Before 2016, Welsh football existed in the shadow of Welsh rugby. After 2016 it stood alongside it. A generation of young Welsh people who might have been indifferent to football became invested in the national team in a way that has not faded.
It changed the expectations of Welsh football supporters. Before 2016 qualifying for a tournament was the dream. After 2016 it became the floor. Wales qualified for Euro 2020. They qualified for the 2022 World Cup. The expectation now is that Wales will be at major tournaments.
And it created the Red Wall. Not literally — the support had always been there. But Euro 2016 gave Welsh football support a name, an identity and a self-awareness that has shaped everything since. The Red Wall Cymru T-Shirt is what that looks like worn.
The Summer That Will Not Fade
A decade on from that summer in France the memories have not dimmed. If anything they have grown more vivid with the passing of time.
Welsh football fans who were in Bordeaux and Lens and Toulouse and Paris and Lille that summer carry those experiences with them. They are part of the story they tell about themselves. Where were you when Bale beat England. Where were you when Robson-Kanu turned through three Belgians.
The summer of 2016 was the summer Wales changed. The summer a generation of Welsh football fans got something they had waited their whole lives for and discovered that it was even better than they had imagined.
It was the summer nobody wanted to go home.
And for those who were there, in the most important sense, they never really did.
The Class of 2016 deserves to be remembered and worn. Browse our Welsh football T-shirts — from the Class of 2016 T-Shirt to the Bale, Bellamy & Rush T-Shirt — each one tells a part of the story of what it means to follow Wales.
