On 11 June 2016, Gareth Bale scored the opening goal in Wales’s 2-1 victory over Slovakia in the UEFA European Championship Finals; the first goal scored by a Welsh player at an international tournament for nearly 58 years.

For many, Euro 2016 was the catharsis to years of heartbreak and failed qualifying campaigns, and drew parallels to Wales’s World Cup golden generation through the clothing brand Spirit of ’58.

However, the ‘Spirit of ‘58’ is perhaps more rooted in modern nostalgia than the actual events of 1958. Poor television and local media coverage meant the 1958 World Cup simply passed a lot of people by in Wales. Footballing identity in Wales since 2016 has thus anchored itself to a period in which football was in decline, and a World Cup that few people truly experienced.

Mel Charles, a member of the 1958 squad, even remarked, “I don’t think a lot of people in Wales knew the World Cup was on.”[1]

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A Grand Chance

Qualifying for the World Cup in Sweden came as a surprise for the Football Association of Wales. Drawn into a tough UEFA qualifying group, Wales were eliminated despite victories over Czechoslovakia and East Germany in Cardiff.

A second chance presented itself on 16 December 1957. As the Islamic nations Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and Sudan refused to play Israel in their Africa-Asia qualifiers, the latter nation would have made it to the tournament without playing a single game. FIFA thus devised a play-off between Israel and another randomly drawn qualifying runner-up. Uruguay, Italy and Belgium all declined to take part in the process before Wales were drawn.

The Times and Daily Mirror stressed that this was a ‘second chance’ for Wales, and FAW chairman Milwyn Jenkins was quoted as saying, “it’s a grand chance and we shall certainly take advantage of it.”[2]

For Welsh players, such as Terry Medwin, Israel was a chance at redemption:

In many ways, we felt that justice had been done … We beat the Czechs in Cardiff and crushed the East Germans 4-1 there.[3]

The play-off was a formality, as Wales ran out 2-0 winners in both Tel Aviv and Cardiff. Wales were bolstered by the returning Ivor Allchurch, who had missed the last seven internationals through injury, and John Charles, who frequently missed internationals while playing for Juventus in Italy.

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Soccer Superman

Football in the 1950s was still rooted as the workingman’s game; the maximum wage meant footballers earned slightly more than skilled workers and players were unlikely to escape their humble roots in terraced houses.[4]

‘Soccer Superman’ John Charles,[5] and Trevor Ford were exceptions to this.

Looking to circumvent the wage cap, Ford had accepted under-the-counter payments while employed by Sunderland. This resulted in a domestic ban when he published the details in his 1956 autobiography while still an active player.[6] After initially deciding to retire, Ford moved abroad where he plied his trade with PSV Eindhoven in the Eredivisie.

John Charles on the other hand sought his fortune in Italy, signing for Juventus in 1957 for a British record fee of £65,000. Charles’s weekly wage was £18, £2 less than at his former club Leeds, but included additional incentives such as a £15 home win bonus, £25 away win bonus, £500 for special matches and £10,000 of the transfer fee.[7]

Players like Ford and Charles underpinned the desired escape from ‘footballing slavery’ that culminated in a threatened PFA strike in 1961 and the abolition of the wage cap.[8]

Charles’s first game for Juventus took place on tour in Sweden, during a 10-1 thrashing of AIK, scoring twice. The Stockholm daily newspaper Tidningen ran the headline ‘John Charles KO’s AIK’ and Dagens Nyeter predicted, “John Charles will pull big crowds in the Italian championships next year.”[9]

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By the time of the World Cup, John Charles was a true celebrity. It was vitally important for both Wales and Sweden that Charles was released by Juventus to play. On 5 June, just days before Wales’s opener against Hungary, the Mirror reported that Swedish officials ‘heaved a sign of relief’ as Charles arrived:

Ticket sales had not been good for Welsh World Cup games. People were waiting for Charles to arrive. ‘Now we shall be sold out’, said Lonngren.[10]

Charles was the central protagonist to Wales’s campaign in most media reports. Sölvesborg labelled Charles ‘world famous’,[11] while several newspapers such as Hudiksvallstidningen referred to him as the ‘dreaded Welsh millionaire’ as his initial transfer fee was worth just over an equivalent one million Swedish Krona.[12]

A Fiery Start

In the build up to the tournament in the Welsh media, there was little to indicate a World Cup was even taking place.

The first Western Mail headline, published 30 May, read, “Murphy Reads The Riot Act: Welsh Players Are Told To Take Task More Seriously”.[13] The article painted Welsh football in an embarrassing light, and highlighted how several players had forgotten their passports, tracksuits, training equipment, and even a ball.

Once the World Cup kicked off, reporting did increase, and the back-page of the Western Mail featured a ‘World Cup Sports Special’ after each round. Dewi Lewis (Western Mail) and Bill McGowran (Evening Post) travelled to Sweden and published articles the day after matches were played.

Articles following the opening Hungary draw remained optimistic, and suggested that poor refereeing decisions denied ‘fiery’ Wales.[14] However, this quickly soured as Wales’s abject performances against Mexico and Sweden yielded heavy criticism and were described as ‘aimless’ and ‘shocking’.[15]

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A Gallant Exit

In the British media, John Charles was ‘the idol of the crowd’.[16] However Wales’s success was perhaps hampered by Jimmy Murphy’s adherence to defensive football.

Wales earned three draws in the group: 1-1 against Hungary, 1-1 against Mexico, 0-0 against Sweden. Mervyn Thomas of the South Wales Echo described the Mexico game as one of the worst Wales matches ever, and Murphy’s decision to play John Charles at centre-half against Sweden led to Aftonbladet’s headline ‘What Are Wales Doing To John Charles?’[17]

Defensive football led to a group play-off between Wales and Hungary, with Wales winning 2-1, but resulted in an injured John Charles. With Charles out injured, the eventual champions, Brazil, eliminated Wales in the quarterfinals via the first international goal for 17-year-old Pelé: Even if Bob Peddington of the Daily Express described it as a ‘fluke goal’…[18]

Murphy later regretted his defensive style in the group, believing that if the physically challenging play-off could have been avoided, Wales could have beaten Brazil.[16] The Times took a more sympathetic view, noting that ‘not even a super-human could deny the vaunted Brazilians’.[19]

Britain Against The Iron Curtain

In the media, sport is an extensive source ‘banal nationalism’; a concept in which subtle reminders of one’s national identity are often the most effective, be it through national flags, anthems, or geographic modifiers. For Michael Billig, media ‘flag-waving’ extends across the political spectrum to present ‘our victories’ and ‘our heroes’.[20]

In the British media, the World Cup was presented as a British affair. All four home nations had qualified, and the Cold War climate ensured that the ‘Iron Curtain nations’ were the primary antagonists.[22]

Cold War tensions boiled over during Wales’s play-off game with Hungary. Only 2,823 spectators attended amid a boycott, and protests erupted in the stands over the execution of former Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy the previous day.

There was little that was uniquely Welsh in the press. Mentions of Wales in national papers were relegated to sub-sections of articles that stressed British achievements and banal Britishness.

The positioning of these articles is key in understanding the popular decline of football in Wales at the end of the 1950s. In the Evening Post, games in which Wales performed badly were relegated to the slim margins of the paper while cricket took the headlines.

Upon landing in Sweden, the Welsh team were presented with bouquets of red, white and blue, and God Save the Queen was played before each match.[23] Wales’s flag also did not feature on the official FIFA poster, but the Union Jack did.

This was rather typical of the time, as ‘Britishness’ was an integral aspect of Welsh identity in the post-war period.

In the Welsh media, there was this sense of banal Britishness, believing that Wales had done ‘a grand job for British soccer’.[24] This was partnered by patriotic pieces, but only when Wales played well, or after their elimination.

After elimination, the Western Mail declared ‘Fiery Welsh Make Gallant Exit’ and that the people of Gothenburg had ‘nothing but praise for the gallant Welsh’.[25] The Evening Post even offered one of the first examples of international rivalry between the home nations:

Yes, little Wales, the side which they said had no right to be in the competition, have done as well as England, and better than Scotland.[26]

The Spirit of ‘58

Returning to Swansea after the tournament, Mel Charles was asked by a ticket conductor, ‘been on your holidays again, Mel?’[27] Charles shrugged this off and suggested, ‘I don’t suppose he had been reading the papers’.[28]

Virtually no Welsh fans travelled to the tournament either as World Cup 1958 saw the fourth lowest average attendance per game at just 24,800. 90 servicemen had flown from Cyprus to watch the first Wales qualifier against Israel,[29] and a few hundred seamen stationed in Stockholm watched Wales vs. Mexico.[30]

Television was quickly labelled the cause of low attendances. Dewi Lewis even claimed that Sweden had ‘sold their soul to television’.[31]

Conversely, each round of matches in Sweden kicked off at the same time, and only one match could be broadcast live via Eurovision to the entirety of Europe at any one time. Wales vs. Sweden was thus the only televised Welsh game of the entire tournament.

Despite the tournament’s lack of popularity, James Walvin believed that the late-1950s signalled an expansion of football’s national boundaries. After the 1958 World Cup, British teams had increased desires to win international competitions, while the performances of Brazil led many to accept:

The world’s greatest teams and players were, by the late 1950s, more likely to be found in South America than in Europe. Indeed it was becoming clearer by the year that footballing talent had no obvious national boundaries; no natural source of local inspiration. Its historical point of origin mattered little, for it was a game driven forward, throughout the world, by a widening and infectious support among untold millions of people who knew nothing, and cared even less, about where and how the game originated. The pioneering British footballing traditions were of no more than passing or antiquarian interest. It was clear, by the end of the 1950s, that great footballers were just as likely to emerge from the shanty towns of Brazil as from the tough tenements of Glasgow. And as enthusiasm for the game spread world-wide, footballing talent began to appear in a host of societies – in Africa, Asia and in Arab states – places which would, not long before, have seemed hostile environments to football.[32]

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Further Reading:

For information on the growth and decline of post-war British football see:

Matthew Taylor, The Association Game: A History of British Football (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2008)

James Walvin, The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited (Ebook: Mainstream Publishing, 2014)

For information on the history of football from a Welsh perspective see:

Phil Stead, Red Dragons: The Story of Welsh Football (Y Lolfa Cyf, 2012)

Martin Johnes, History of Sport in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005)

Newspaper Archives:

Svenska Dagstidningar (Swedish Newspaper Archive) – https://tidningar.kb.se/

The Times Digital Archive – http://gale.cengage.co.uk/times-digital-archive/times-digital-archive-17852006.aspx

UK Press Online, Mirror and Express Archive – http://www.ukpressonline.co.uk/ukpressonline/

Swansea Libraries Local Welsh Archival Newspapers (microfilm) – https://www.swansea.gov.uk/libraryresearch

[1] Phil Stead, Red Dragons: The Story of Welsh Football (Y Lolfa Cyf, 2012), p. 174

[2] Daily Mirror (London), Monday, 16 December 1957, p. 16; The Times (London), Monday, 16 December 1957, Issue 54025, p. 5

[3] Stead, 2012, p. 166

[4] Martin Johnes, History of Sport in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005), p. 72

[5] ‘Big John vs. Little Tisch’, Daily Mirror, Wednesday, 15 January 1958, p. 16

[6] Matthew Taylor, The Association Game: A History of British Football (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2008), p. 230

[7] ibid.

[8] ibid., p. 231

[9] Mario Risoli, John Charles: Gentle Giant (Ebook: Mainstream Publishing, 2003), Chapter 5, Para. 11-12

[10] ‘Charles In’, Daily Mirror (London), Thursday, 5 June 1958, p. 20

[11] Sölvesborg (Sölvesborg), Friday, 6 June 1958

[12] Hudiksvallstidningen (Hudiksvall), Monday, 9 June 1958

[13] Western Mail (Cardiff), Friday, 30 May 1958, p. 12

[14] ‘Fiery Welsh Shake Hungary’, Western Mail (Cardiff), Monday, 9 June 1958, p. 14; ‘Welshmen Confident of Victory – Hungarians and Wales Tipped for Quarter Finals’, Western Mail (Cardiff), Wednesday, 11 June 1958, p. 14; ‘Glaring Foul Ignored – and Wales are Robbed of Victory’, South Wales Evening Post (Swansea), Monday, 9 June 1958, p. 10

[15] ‘Welsh Display Was Shocking’, Western Mail (Cardiff), Thursday, 12 June 1958, p. 14; ‘Ivor Alone Shone In Ragged, Aimless Forward Line’, South Wales Evening Post (Swansea), Thursday, 12 June 1958, p. 10

[16] ‘Charles the Hero of Fighting Wales’, Daily Mirror (London), Monday, 9 June 1958, p. 19

[17] Risoli, 2003, Chapter 7, Para. 45

[18] ‘Wonderful Wales: Fluke Goal Beats Gallant Kelsey’, Daily Express (London), Friday, 20 June 1958, p. 12

[19] Stead, 2012, p. 168

[20] ‘Wales’s Gallant Exit From World Cup’, The Times (London), Friday, 20 June 1958, Issue 54182, p. 15

[21] Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: SAGE Publications, 1995), p. 108-109

[22] ‘Unlucky England Out Of The World Cup: Failure In Attack Against Russia’, The Times (London), Wednesday, 18 June 1958, Issue 54180, p. 3: “But the United Kingdom still survives. Late news has come through from other quarters. Northern Ireland and Wales have got their own back against the Iron Curtain and the British Isles still have something to live for here”

[23] Stead, 2012, p. 168

[24] Western Mail (Cardiff), Monday, 23 June 1958, p. 12

[25] Western Mail (Cardiff), Friday, 20 June 1958, p. 12

[26] South Wales Evening Post (Swansea), Sunday 15 June 1958, p. 8

[27] Mario Risoli, Pelé Broke Our Hearts (Cardiff: St David’s Press, 2001), p. 138

[28] ibid.

[29] Stead, 2012, p. 168

[30] Risoli, 2001, p. 90

[31] ‘Soccer TV Repeats Can Be Deceptive’, Western Mail (Cardiff), Tuesday, 24 June 1958, p. 10

[32] James Walvin, The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited (Ebook: Mainstream Publishing, 2014), Chapter 8, Para. 18-19