The Wales national football team represents Wales in international football. It is controlled by the Football Association of Wales, the governing body for football in Wales. The team recorded the biggest rise in the history of the FIFA World Rankings, moving from 117th in 2011 to 8th place in 2015. They are also the smallest nation by population to ever reach the semi-finals of the UEFA European Championship, after reaching the UEFA Euro 2016 semi-final.
About Wales national football team in brief
The Wales national football team represents Wales in international football. It is controlled by the Football Association of Wales, the governing body for football in Wales. The team recorded the biggest rise in the history of the FIFA World Rankings, moving from 117th in 2011 to 8th place in 2015. They are also the smallest nation by population to ever reach the semi-finals of the UEFA European Championship, after reaching the UEFA Euro 2016 semi-final. Wales played its first competitive match on 25 March 1876 against Scotland in Glasgow, making it the third oldest international football team in the world. The associations of the four Home Nations met at the International Football Conference in Manchester on 6 December 1882 to set down a set of worldwide rules. The 1883–84 season saw the formation of the British Home Championship, a tournament which was played annually between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, until 1983–84. Wales were champions on 12 occasions, winning outright seven times whilst sharing the title five times. The 1950s were a golden age for Welsh football with stars such as Ivor Allchurch, Cliff Jones, Alf Sherwood, Jack Kelsey, Trevor Ford, Ronnie Burgess, Terry Medwin and John Charles. Wales made its only World Cup finals tournament appearance in the 1958 edition in Sweden. They also progressed through UEFA Euro 1976 qualifying to the quarter-finals, though this was played on a two-legged, home-and-away basis and is not considered part of the finals tournament. In 1932, Wales played host to the Republic of Ireland, the first time they played against a side from outside the four home nations.
In 1946, Wales, along with the other three home nations, rejoined FIFA in 1946 and took part in the qualifying rounds for the 1950 World Cup, the 1949–50 Home Championships being designated as a qualifying group. The FAW became members of FIFA, world football’s governing body, in 1910, but the British nations withdrew from FIFA in 1928 in a dispute over payments to amateur players. As a result, Wales did not enter the first three FIFA World Cups. The majority of Welsh football clubs play in the Welsh football league system. Wales has always had a national footballteam that plays in major professional tournaments, though not in the Olympic Games. The first international football match on Welsh soil took place at the Racecourse Ground, Wrexham, on 5 March 1877, when Scotland took the spoils winning 2–0. One year later, Wales travelled to Paris to play France national football Team in a match drawn 1–1. The last time Wales played a match outside the United Kingdom was in the 1984 World Cup in Brazil, when they were drawn out against Israel in a 2-0 defeat at the Ramat Gan Stadium. Wales went through to a World Cup tournament finals finals tournament without actually playing a match without a match and so were awarded two places in the tournament. However, their path to qualification was unusual. Having finished second to Czechoslovakia in qualifying Group 4, the golden generation of Welsh Football managed by Jimmy Murphy seemed to have missed out qualification, but Egypt had refused to play against Israel on neutral ground.
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This page is based on the article Wales national football team published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 04, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
