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 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, a Champions League winner with Real Madrid. Aaron Ramsey was the creative heartbeat of Arsenal's midfield. 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 all contributed to a defensive solidity that made Wales difficult to beat.

And then there was the belief. Something that Chris Coleman had built carefully over three years. A conviction within the squad that they were good enough. That this was their time.

Wales finished second in the group, behind Belgium, but both teams qualified automatically for Euro 2016. It was the first time Wales had reached 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.

The group stage

Wales beat Slovakia in their opening match, Gareth Bale scoring a stunning free kick to set things in motion. The Welsh support in the stadium was extraordinary. Don't Take Me Home rang out across Bordeaux.

Against England in Lens came one of the most agonising nights of the summer. Gareth Bale gave Wales the lead with a free kick in the first half. Jamie Vardy equalised. Then, deep in stoppage time, Daniel Sturridge struck to win it for England 2-1. Welsh hearts were broken. But Wales were not out.

The response against Russia was everything. Wales won 3-0, with Ramsey, Taylor and Bale on the scoresheet, and topped Group B as group winners.

The knockout rounds

Wales beat Northern Ireland in the last sixteen, a victory settled by an own goal that felt almost anticlimactic compared to the drama of the England match. Then came Belgium in the quarter finals.

Belgium were the second ranked team in the world. They had De Bruyne, Hazard, Lukaku. They were expected to dismantle Wales.

Instead, Wales produced one of the great performances in the history of Welsh football. Hal Robson-Kanu's turn through three Belgian defenders for the second goal, the kind of skill that belongs in a different dimension, became the image of the tournament. Wales won 3-1. They were in the semi final of a European Championship.

The semi final and after

Portugal in the semi final. Ronaldo scored. Nani scored in the second half and Wales lost 2-0. A deflating end to a tournament that had given Welsh football fans more than they had dared to hope for.

But even in defeat, the summer felt right. Because what had happened over those weeks in France was too good, too unexpected, too joyful to simply pack away and forget.

The tournament changed Welsh football permanently. It confirmed a generation of supporters 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 scored against 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.

Diolch, Mike