We’re living in the post-Balean age and it’s going to be beautiful
The children who witnessed Gareth Bale’s career will grow up with a confidence their parents never had - with the belief that Wales will win. Our future will be different to our past.
Wales fans asked for a few words to sum up the spirit of Gareth Bale might offer ‘Wales, golf, Madrid’, the three-word slogan coined by a fuming Madridista columnist and minted by a Welsh flag wag.
At the age of 33 Bale has retired from playing with a love letter to Welsh fans, separate to his general anouncement of the news. The reciprocal love between the Red Wall and its chief bricklayer is clear and genuine.
A deluge of Bale hot takes has flooded the internet and Welsh fans are reading every. single. one. They are packed with the memories we all want to relive until the end of time. But rather than the age-defying brace against Austria or his crucial header in Cyprus, the thing I keep thinking about this week is more esoteric than that. Bale has made me think about the nature of belief and disbelief.
I knew, in theory, that Wales could qualify for a tournament finals because we’d seen it happen to other smaller nations; Iceland, Scotland, Croatia. I also knew that cycles of failure almost always end; unless you’re San Marino. But we Welsh fans were so conditioned to failure that I had zero belief in it happening.
In order for there to be belief, you first need to experience disbelief. You need to see the rules of physics, as you understand them, torn to shreds before your eyes and miracles performed in their place.
Bale manifested that on the pitch. He’s a loaves and fishes kind of messiah. A doer. He fed the 30,000 with moments that left fans open-mouthed in disbelief, begining with a direct free-kick goal in a 5–1 defeat by Slovakia (we’ll come back to those later) in just his third cap.
Let’s be honest though: we’d been here before.
Ryan Giggs scored a direct free-kick in a 2–0 win over Belgium on his first start for Wales.
Welsh fans watch Giggs’ career sizzle reel — and that FA Cup goal — with a sigh at how few of his best moments came in a Wales shirt. Giggs did memorable things for Wales but not enough of them and not at the key times. It’s hard to ask one player to do it all alone. The Giggs era showed us that just because we had a world-class player it didn’t mean you could qualify for a major tournament. We needed more than a great player.
But we knew this too. The weight of Wales has long crushed our greats; Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, Neville Southall. There’s a lot of crossover between the list of Welsh football greats and the list of the greatest players never to grace at a major tournament. These were the evidence-based facts we believed; that even one of the best players in the world couldn’t get little Wales to qualify; that we needed more than a group of great players like Sparky, Nev and The Nose.
We needed a superman. And we got one.
Bale took those articles of faith — these things that we believed — and shredded them in front of us. He presented us with acts of disbelief with such regularity that we had no choice but to believe.
When my group of decades-long Wales-watching mates were endorsing the bars of Bordeaux in the hours before the Euro 2016 finals opener against Slovakia (them again) we were happy just to see Wales play on the big stage. If we were being greedy we wanted a Wales goal. We had qualified, yes, but our horizons remained limited.
In the 10th minute Bale scored with a direct free kick he gifted with truculent swazz. It appeared at first to be a mid-pace inswinger left-to-right. But halfway to goal the ball changed direction entirely. Goalkeeper Matúš Kozáčik had moved to his left to gather it easily but it hit the net two foot to his right. He wasn’t beaten by raw pace or precise placement, he was beaten by something altogether more confounding, some kind of spherical magic. He couldn’t believe it.
In the stands, having broken our tear ducts during the anthem, all we had left was a collective loss of motor skills; limb-flailing ecstasy. First, Bale fulfilled our meagre hopes and then he completely redrew our expectations. Not for one second did we think that his goal would prove the catalyst for a run to a semi-final against Ronaldo’s Portugal. We would have laughed had you predicted it. (We were drunk, but not that drunk.) And then he — we, they — just kept going.
We learned to place no boundaries on what could be achieved. We suspended disbelief and discovered belief.
That goal was the big bang moment for Welsh football. Aeons of pain evaporated into giddy gas and galaxies of possibility formed. Explain to me how else Sir Hal Robson Kanu, a player of hitherto limited achievements in the game, could ‘Cruyff turn’ the Belgian backline and stun the world.
The skill was Hal’s but Bale elevates his team-mates. People grow around him.
Welsh football, too, has grown around him into a fiesta of positivity. Cultural momentum gained weight in his mass and gravity. English-speaking South Walians who previously only knew the Welsh words for the national anthem and the Lord’s Prayer (in that order) now sing every word to Dafydd Iwan’s recklessly contagious power-ballad Yma O Hyd. The Football Association of Wales PR team played a blinder in harnessing Bale’s magic. There is a feelgood factor around Welsh football neither I or my 72-year-old father have ever experienced.
The question is, will it last now that Bale has left the stage? Does belief only exist where and while he treads, or has he left a permanent mark? I don’t know. I don’t have any real experience with belief.
I do know that just as cycles of failure end, so too do cycles of success. Wales are at an inflection point. We are, I fear, set for a tough patch in the immediate future as we come to terms with a cycle that is ending but I believe that in the medium to long-term the expanded horizons Bale gifted us will have a a very real effect.
Welsh children who have grown up in the Balean era have borne witness to a boy from Whitchurch High School conquering the football world and lifting his country to unimagined levels. The children of the Bale generation will believe they can win. They will expect to succeed. They will grow up with a belief I never had.
What Bale has done for Wales will be measured at World Cup 2038 or Euro 46 with hordes of today’s inspired children grown into squads of depth, ability and confidence.
The end of this era marks a new beginning for Wales. Before our next big moment arrives we may — or may not — need to blow hard on the embers of our new-found belief. But I can do that now having seen success with my own eyes. The barriers around Welsh belief have been obliterated.
Bale is metaphysical. He is gone but still here. He is space and time. He’s a statue in the future. He is belief. He is religion. He is Loki AND Thor. He will always be ours, and we his.
He is the icon - in the literal sense — in which Wales placed its faith.
Bale; Disbelief. Belief.
In that order.
