- David Richard
- BBC Sport Wales
Wales have not qualified for the World Cup since the great John Charles (left) helped them reach the quarter-finals in 1958
If you want to know how important it is for Wales to play the World Cup qualifying play-off, perhaps the best point to start with is the last time they were in those competitions, and that was in 1958.
Far from the highly professional process of modern international football in which Gareth Bale and his companions faced Austria last Thursday in a match that ended with Wales winning 2-1, the situation was different when the Wales team traveled to Israel 64 years ago, where the team practiced there without any balls .
This meant that coach Jimmy Murphy prepared his team for the first leg in Tel Aviv with only fitness sessions.
“It was really amateur work,” says Phil Steed, author of Red Dragons, a book on Welsh football history.
“But to be fair to the Wales Football Association, international football was not what it is now,” adds Stead.
This is very clear when you look at Wales’ qualifying for that tournament.
Teams in the UK had been trying to qualify for the World Cup since 1950, and the 1958 tournament in Sweden was the best chance for Wales, which then had an excellent generation of players that included Tottenham winger Cliff Jones, Swansea striker Ivor Olchurch and the great Juventus striker John Charles.
Wales suffered from a tough group in qualifying alongside Czechoslovakia and East Germany despite beating Czechoslovakia 1-0 in Cardiff in the opening match.
However, from that point things started to fall apart.
“Wales were good enough to win that set, but the preparation was really shocking,” says Stead.
He continued, “Wales received two defeats by Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and the number of members of the administrative mission on the plane was equal to the number of players.”
He explained, “The Wales players were professionals, and they played in East Germany in front of a crowd of 110,000 people as the hosts struggled to win 2-1, and due to injury and disease, Wales only had 10 players for their next match in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia.”
Stead added, “The team management was reluctant to call up more players, and in the end they snatched Ray Daniel from his vacation.”
“He didn’t have his own playing boots, so he had to get new boots and play all the games and he got injured,” Stead said. Things got worse for Daniel, who scored an own goal as Wales lost to Czechoslovakia 2-0.
Wales’ hopes of qualifying were dashed despite their 4-1 victory over East Germany in their final match, and they were eliminated – or so they thought.
Wells got an unexpected second chance thanks to Israel’s unique circumstances.
In the Asian qualifying group for Israel, Turkey withdrew because it thought it should have competed in Europe, then Indonesia withdrew because it did not want to play in Tel Aviv, before Egypt and then Sudan refused to face Israel.
Thus, Israel became the group winner by default, but FIFA did not allow it to qualify for the World Cup without playing a single match.
Instead, world football’s governing body staged a playoff in which Israel plays on home and away soil against a team of the nine European nations that finished second in their groups.
The story says that the names were put in the Jules Rimet Cup itself, and the first name to be withdrawn was Belgium, which refused to face Israel for political reasons.
Then it was Wales. Any objections? of course not.
“It was a huge boost for us because we thought we missed our chance,” Cliff Jones, Wales and Tottenham winger at the time, told BBC Sport Wales.
“It was very political at the time because a number of countries did not want to play against Israel,” he added.
Fortunately for Jones and his teammates, the Wales Football Association did not share the same political interests as some of the other associations.
“It was not surprising, given the political situation at the time and the British relationship with Israel,” Stead explains.
Home and Away
Israel was pleased to host Wales in Tel Aviv for the first leg in January 1958.
“We were very welcome,” says Jones, noting that “every Wales player got a box of Jaffa oranges as a gift, which is fantastic.”
picture released, Getty Images
Each Wales player and coach received a box of Jaffa oranges as a gift
The team was also invited to a reception by the British ambassador who hung bundles of leeks around the embassy to make the Wales players feel at home.
Although the lack of balls in training made preparations far from ideal, Wales won the first leg 2-0 thanks to goals from Olchurch and David Bowen.
The return leg was played in Ninian Park 3 weeks later and the Israel team enjoyed their trip to Cardiff.
“They went to the movies on Queen Street and had a great time because traveling abroad wasn’t as common as it is now, so it was a huge thrill for them,” says Stead.
Wales dominated the match, winning 2-0 as Olchurch opened the scoring again before Jones added the second goal to seal qualification.
“Knowing we were going to play in the World Cup was special, especially because we thought we had lost our chance,” Jones says.
“I played for Ivor, who was a Swansea boy like me, for several seasons at Fitchfield.
He went on to say, “He was definitely one of the greats in football, someone had to play with his abilities at the top, and that summit was the World Cup.”
world Cup
Newspapers at the time were dismissive of Wales’ chances of progressing in the World Cup, but Wales defied expectations by advancing from their group that included 1954 runners-up Hungary, Sweden (host country) and Mexico.
Wales played the quarter-final match against Brazil.
“We ignored some people, and we proved they were wrong,” Jones says.
He added, “We showed that we deserve to be at this level in world football. We performed well and lost in the end at the hands of Brazil.”
He continued: “We had heard about players like Vava and Didi, but there was a boy who was only 17 years old named Pele, and it was amazing to see what skill this little boy had, and we wondered who this little boy is? Who is he? It was a vision maybe The greatest football player ever is a very special moment… we knew this player would be the best.”
picture released, Getty Images
Pele won the World Cup with Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970
Pele scored the only goal in Brazil’s 1-0 win, a match in which Wales lost John Charles, who had been injured in the previous Hungary match.
Since then, Wales has been absent from international forums until its qualification for the 2016 European Nations Cup ended a 58-year absence from the major finals.