With less than a week to go before the 2022 FIFA World Cup kicks off, excitement is building as 32 teams prepare to take part in the greatest show on earth. For Wales fans that excitement is especially palpable as the majority of them have never witnessed their team play on the biggest stage, with the last time Wales featured at a World Cup being all the way back in 1958.
That’s not to say that Welsh football fans haven’t enjoyed previous World Cups, with iconic tournaments and moments lighting up TV schedules and ingraining themselves into public consciousness for generations - be it Diego Maradona’s heroics (with some help from his left hand) in 1986, Roberto Baggio’s missed penalty in the sweltering USA heat of 1994, Ronaldo taking the world by storm and then nearly dying before the final in 1998, and of course Zinedine Zidane’s last ever act on a professional football field in 2006 when he headbutted Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the chest.
But few tournaments are more iconic, more vivid in the mind, than Italia ‘90. Kicking off on June 8, 1990, the tournament seemed to wrestle a grip on the nation. After the tragedies of Heysel and Hillsborough, there was a sense that football in the UK was in the gutter. But for many, those four weeks in Italy changed all that. You can get the latest WalesOnline newsletters e-mailed to you directly for free by signing up here.
