Wales fans sing through the night but Euro 2025 elimination is a reality check

New York Times

a day ago

Midnight in St Gallen, 21 hours to Wales' final Euro 2025 kick-off. Andrea Bocelli is issuing orders. It's time to say goodbye, apparently, to the night and this place, specifically a 15×15-foot karaoke hot box two stories high in the Swiss sky.
The room is stuffed with Wales fans, former players, friends and family of current ones, and even the Welsh media. And, of course, no one is listening to Bocelli, or the gracious but bleary-eyed Swiss bartender in a bar that is almost certainly in contravention of Swiss safety codes with this mosh-pit of bodies and creaking floorboards. Instead, there is protest by song, Welsh hymns beating against the impending silence of closing time, against the rising Swiss sun itself.
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This has been Wales' Euro 2025 story: a happy, song-filled act of resistance to inevitability.
Because bars close and suns rise and Wales are going home. Their 6-1 defeat to reigning European champions England on Sunday proved to be the unavoidable last call on their first major tournament.
On paper, this is unsurprising. Wales are the lowest-ranked side (30th) at this competition, drawn into a wretched group of two former European champions (England, 2022; Netherlands, 2017) and 2022 semi-finalists France.
Some former Wales national team players from the 1990s and their families speak about the potential of a 7-0 win before kick-off to progress to the knockout rounds, dissecting the avenues where such a feat could happen — but an early goal, then two on either side of half-time, all while quadruple-marking Lauren James, soon mean flights home on Monday are being checked into, train departures discussed.
'We're Wales,' says Michele Adams, one of the three women who successfully lobbied the Football Association of Wales (FAW) in 1992 to formally recognise a national women's team, more than 20 years after the near 50-year ban on women's football was lifted in the country.
'It has never been easy,' Karen Jones, another of the three, finishes for her.
But Wales fans gather for the 800-metre walk to Kybunpark regardless, bracing for a lopsided battle in the only way they know how: by song. Into pink-streaked clouds hums Yma o Hyd, a patriotic 1983 ode to this nation's ability to survive.
A pair of boots is packed surreptitiously into a Wales fan's carrier bag. 'In case of a pitch invasion,' they explain with a wink. Among the Wales family section, a buzz simmers. Wales forward Hannah Cain's grandfather has made the trip. Lily Woodham's nan. Esther Morgan's sisters and parents each wear a shirt bearing the full-back's name but a different number. 'All the numbers she's ever worn,' they tell The Athletic. 'We are her career.'
It has taken multiple villages to reach this point.
From Adams, Jones and former Wales captain and UEFA vice-president Laura McAllister penning their letter in 1992, to the women's team being removed from their Euro 2005 qualification due to FAW budget cuts. From Woodham's nan watching her granddaughter play on the local grass pitches at seven years old — 'I never imagined one day we'd be here,' she says, her eyes scanning the crowd — to when Jess Fishlock made her 100th Wales appearance in Llanelli in April 2017. 'How many of us were there?' a family friend of Fishlock's asks. From here, heads turn, taking in the sheer weight of red around them. 'Not as many as there are now,' comes the answer.
It is perhaps why the manner of Wales' final tussle in Switzerland stings so coldly, to have the known yawning gaps of quality and infrastructure exposed under such harsh fluorescent lighting.
At half-time, four goals down, confirmation is murmured that James is 'actually untameable'. Beers are bought. Grimaces exchanged. 'Reality check' becomes the word of the hour. Wales are the only nation in Group D without a fully professional domestic league. The only team with a 0.2 per cent chance of lifting the trophy, according to Opta.
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A sigh. A shrug. A bare-boned list of consolation prizes assembles: no more goals conceded. A goal of Wales' own. 'This is just where we're at now,' it is agreed.
The appropriate thing to do here is to discuss necessary forward progression, how to construct bridges over gulfs.
But then Wales centurion Fishlock picks up the ball in the 76th minute. And at this point, the 38-year-old midfielder's ineffably still whirring legs are the only forward-moving objects anyone cares about. Because the Seattle Reign forward is now laying a perfectly weighted pass off to Cain, who thumps Wales' second goal of the Euros beyond Hannah Hampton with enough venom to momentarily banish memories of everything else: the 13 goals conceded, the three defeats, the hard-edged reality crystallising around what, just a few hours earlier, still warbled like a daydream.
By every technical standard, Cain's goal is pure consolation. But that does not stop fans and family from choosing to remain in it, not only because of how illusory these moments have long been for this team with a dragon on its heart, but because of the movements those moments potentially inspire.
So at full time, there are tears. Chants of 'Wales!' are belted back into the sky from the nearly 3,000 in attendance. Manager Rhian Wilkinson is leaping over the pitch's side hoardings, much to the alarm of the stadium security. The former Canada international is shaking every hand she can.
Finally, it is midnight — three hours since Wales' final Euro 2025 kick-off. There is no Bocelli. Kybunpark should be empty. But in the terraces, the remaining families of players are singing Yma o Hyd.
'They're still here? Singing?' asks Adams as she wanders outside with Jones. Whether the former midfielder is looking for a response is unclear.
But the answer is, unimaginably, yes. Because, sometimes, what else is there to do?