Wales

Wales fans feel pride and despair but not anger after swift World Cup exit | Elis James

01-Dec-2022 07:30:39 | Guardian

Wales turned in three of their worst displays of recent times in Qatar but this journey was always about more than football

It felt a little like a bride walking down the aisle on her special day, only for her dearly beloved to be staring at the reams of toilet paper that were stuck to her shoes. After all the hype and expectation, it wasn’t meant to be like this. A must-win game against our next door neighbours, to stand any chance of progression in our first World Cup for 64 years. Wales 0 England 3. Is this the way the future’s meant to feel?

Unlike the writers in some other newspapers, I am able to experience two emotions at once, with neither being anger. Enormous pride that we qualified. Incredible disappointment that we are going home. But it is disappointment with context. It is far better to get knocked out of a World Cup than not to get to one in the first place. What was so frustrating about the great qualification failures of my time as a supporter – Euro 92, USA 94, Euro 2004 and Russia 2018 – was the feeling of unfinished business, a cosmic unfairness that prevented footballers who were good enough to play on the biggest stage from doing so.