Gareth Bale is the most obvious example of the renaissance of Welsh football. Photograph: Clive Rose/Getty ImagesA few years ago when England played Wales in a World Cup qualifier in Cardiff, the travelling fans serenaded their hosts with a chant of "You're Welsh, and you know you are", still one of my all-time favourite terrace witticisms.
Why? Because it's funny without being offensive, unless you are the sort of person who takes offence at any sort of insult, imagined or real, in which case you would probably be better off not attending football matches.
English people do not dislike the Welsh, we just think they are a bit rubbish. English people do not dislike the Scots either, we just think they are a bit scary. English football fans also have a sort of grudging respect for the Scots, due to the number of great players (not to mention managers) they have sent south of the border over the years, whereas Welsh football is generally regarded as a bit of a joke.
With two Welsh teams in the Premier League, however, and Gareth Bale increasingly likely to become the world's most expensive player, these attitudes are badly in need of revision. Wales are at present above Scotland in the Fifa world rankings, after all. They might both be behind Albania and Burkina Faso, but Wales are ahead of Paraguay, Bulgaria and Turkey, all nations with a decent football tradition. And when was the last Scottish player to set a British transfer record, never mind a world record? Don't bother looking it up, I'll tell you. It was Andy Gray, moving from Villa to Wolves for £1.5m in 1979.
It would not be strictly true to say a Scottish player has never been the world's most expensive – one Andy McCombie was the last to hold that position in 1904, moving from Sunderland to Newcastle for the princely sum of £700. At that stage in football history, hardly anyone outside this country was organised enough to do any buying or selling. In what might be termed the modern era, since the second world war, no Scottish players have been bought or sold for world record amounts, whereas Wales already have Trevor Ford on the honours board, bought by "Bank of England" Sunderland from Aston Villa for £30,000 in 1950.
Though Scotland has produced a greater volume of players since the last war, and some very fine ones, Wales has a proud record of turning up some undisputed class acts. John Charles was perhaps the most famous, not only in terms of almost doubling the transfer record when he left Leeds for £65,000 in 1957, but in pioneering a route to the continent. Unlike some of the Welshmen who followed him, Ian Rush and Mark Hughes, for example, Charles was a great success at his new club, and remains highly revered as a Juventus legend to this day. Rush and Hughes were not quite so effective at Juventus and Barcelona respectively.
The Liverpool player may or may not have described Italy as a foreign country, as the famous story goes – he claims it was actually a quip attributed to him by Kenny Dalglish – but he clearly found it hard to settle both on and off the pitch and was back home after a single season. Hughes found it hard to adapt when Terry Venables took him to Barcelona. Gary Lineker slotted in much more quickly and Hughes was loaned out to Bayern Munich after just one season, though – pub quiz alert* – he did become one of only five players to have appeared for United and Barcelona.
All the same, it is quite surprising to discover that in post-war transfer dealings Welsh players have broken the British record just as many times as Scottish players. The score stands at 4-4 (Billy Steel, Andy Gray and Denis Law twice, against Ford, Charles, Rush and Hughes), and though Scotland can claim one of the most notable transfers when Law moved from Manchester City to Torino for the first six-figure sum, he too was back after a single season when Manchester United nudged the record up to £115,000. Bale, should he join Real Madrid for any of the sums currently being mentioned, would put Wales decisively ahead in this parochial rivalry, with Scotland facing a longish wait to produce a player who might trump a figure of above £80m.
So you can see, especially now Total Network Solutions of beloved memory have changed their name to the rather boring New Saints, Welsh football is not so much of a joke after all. Certainly the very best Welsh footballers are up there with the best in the world. These things cannot always be measured in transfer fees – think what sort of price Ryan Giggs might have commanded had he ever been persuaded to leave Manchester United – but with Scottish talent apparently drying up Wales can still produce individuals to catch the imagination.
Giggs has a claim to being the most remarkable footballer these islands have ever produced, but most generations can name a Wales favourite, be it Charles or Hughes, Ivor Allchurch, Craig Bellamy, Neville Southall or Mickey Thomas. How about Terry Hennessey and Mike England, Ron and Wyn Davies, Robbie Savage and Gary Sprake, and now Bale and Aaron Ramsey? They are Welsh, and they know they are. If Bale continues his development, wherever he happens to end up, the whole world will soon know it too.
*Pub quiz answer: Hughes, Piqué, Larsson, Jordi Cruyff, Blanc.
Supplementary quiz question: When Garry Sobers hit his famous six sixes in one over for Nottinghamshire against Glamorgan at Swansea in 1968, which of the footballers mentioned above briefly appeared on the pitch as substitute fielder for the home side? Clue: he was once the world's most expensive player.
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