One of the many things which has made this Wales team so special is the visibly brilliant team spirit they have within the squad.
They appear to engender a club-like environment despite only seeing each other flittingly throughout the year. That is testament to the atmosphere which has been harnessed through years of hard work and senior players who have been central to the team's success for a decade or more.
It is sometimes the elusive, missing ingredient in international football. It is commonly known that England's so-called 'Golden Generation' appeared to stumble at major tournaments because club rivalry between players got in the way of tightening their bond while representing their country.
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But for Wales, who on Tuesday night take on England needing the greatest result in their history to qualify for the knockout phase of the World Cup, they appear to be able to play to a higher standard than the sum of their parts due to an alchemy of supreme talent from a few individuals and a palpable chemistry between the entire squad.
So, how would this team fare week in, week out at club level? It's an interesting question and one which, interestingly, has been broached by those within the Wales camp. This history boys who took Wales to the European Championships for the first time ever back in 2016, eventually reaching the semi-finals before being knocked out by eventual winners Portugal, were a special bunch and they were the first to raise the idea, albeit tongue-in-cheek.
Chris Coleman's former assistant Osian Roberts revealed to The Athletic: “They joked during the Euros that they wanted Gareth to buy a Welsh club lower down. It was Merthyr (who play in the seventh tier of the English league system), actually.
"Everyone would sign for him and take them all the way through the pyramid to the Premier League, so they could all play together every week. That’s how close they were — they didn’t want to just do it during the international breaks, they wanted to be together every day of the week.”
Chris Gunter, meanwhile, who has played for Wales with Bale for 14 years, has said he would be on board if the Wales captain decided to do it now.
“We would still say it now!” Gunter added. “We used to joke quite a lot about that. Gaz would have been the one who would have had to buy it for obvious reasons, with his salary.
“We used to say it was so easy with Wales because everybody was on the same page — there were no agendas, and that’s where it came from. And we always used to say that we wouldn’t have been a bad team either.
“But that was the sense, that if we could have stayed together in a group in a club environment, I dare say we would have enjoyed football even more than what we have now.”
Merthyr rising from the seventh tier to the Premier League with the entire Wales squad? Now that would be some effort on Football Manager! But certainly an intriguing thought-experiment at the very least...
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