With 23 minutes gone there was a moment of uproar inside the Cardiff City Stadium as Harry Wilson was blocked off outside the Austria penalty area; uproar that gave way almost immediately as Szymon Marciniak blew his whistle for the free-kick.
Suddenly the air was alive with a weird kind of buzz, like the moment in a storm just before the lightning bolt hits and things start to lift: the hairs on your arms, seats flipped up, people in the stands starting to raise their hands above their heads. Gareth Bale paced it out and waited, charging the moment a little more.
There is a concept doing the rounds called “main character energy”. It describes those people who communicate at all times the certainty that whatever might be happening around them, they are the main character in this scene. A way of standing, talking, entering a room. It says: the camera is on me. This is my close-up. Thanks so much for coming.
This is quite a handy notion in sport. Main character energy: sports people need this stuff. Although not too much of it. And ideally, you actually are the main character. Welcome to Cardiff, Österreichische Fussballnationalmannschaft. And thanks, really, for coming.
Up to that point Bale had touched the ball 12 times. He’d floated a header wide. He’d tried to do some pressing. But was there ever any real doubt, as the ball was spotted and Bale took three paces back, who was doing the voiceover here, the cutaways?
Not that this was ever really going to work. Just look at the theatre of it. One-off game, win or bust. The home crowd hero. His first real sighter. Of course it’s thrilling, of course the crowd rises and stiffens. But people don’t score goals like this. It’s too difficult.
It’s also too difficult. The ball was 35 yard or so from goal at an angle. Heinz Lindner had a full wall in place. There was only one spot Bale could put it, and that would require dip, power and perfect accuracy. He’s rusty. It’s early on. Just saying, don’t get your hopes … don’t think that … Oh.
Bale took a hop, four steps, then hit the ball with the top of his foot in the familiar style. It wasn’t really a spank or a rocket, but a clip: all about the rhythm and the ping; and let’s just say it, with something of the golf shot.
What was strange was the trajectory, the ball leaping, dipping, then travelling on in a flat line like a missile. Lindner stopped and craned his neck to look up as that lovely white orb, picked out in the cold Cardiff lights, grazed the bar and went spinning down in an orderly parabola, a thing of beauty even in that moment of hush before the seats erupted.
In the stands people hugged and tumbled over one another. What really lingered was the softness in Bale’s movements: perfect, hard-honed technique executed under pressure, but with an ease that spoke to something spreading back up the foot, the years spent slow-cooking that feeling of team culture, of shared momentum. In that moment Bale really was at home, doing home things.
The Cardiff City Stadium had been a slightly angsty place at kick-off. The Welsh anthem – a top three world anthem, up there with France and Italy – was, as ever, a stirring thing. And this World Cup playoff semi-final was a beautifully streamlined piece of staging. No need to consider developments elsewhere. Just win at home, then win the next one too.
Fittingly enough for a high‑stakes, one-off casino trip of a game, Robert Page had loaded up every chip and swept it all into play. When it’s win or bust, well, it makes a lot of sense to try for the win. So Page picked a team with all the players. A midfield of Joe Allen, Aaron Ramsey and Wilson was never likely to die wondering. In attack Wales had Bale and Daniel James, one to ferret and press for two men, one to provide the fantasy, the vibes.
It did leave them open. On four minutes there was a moment of jaw-drop as Christoph Baumgartner strolled in on goal and saw the ball clang back off the bar. At times here was a large green space at the heart of this Welsh team, Allen trundling gamely around trying to fill the space like a lone forklift truck in an abandoned hangar.
Bale did little early on. This is fine. He doesn’t have to do anything, until he does the thing. And on 51 minutes he did it again to make it 2-0. This was a wonderful team move, Ben Davies holding the ball, Bale taking it off his toe, and swinging it back across and into the top corner.
Marcel Sabitzer’s shot, deflected in off Davies, made it 2-1 with just under half an hour still to run. James kept passing up the chance to kill the game, but somehow this was always going one way. There is another act to play in this ensemble drama. But for one night only in Cardiff there was no doubt who was playing centre stage.
