A CHANGE IS GONNA CYMRU?
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Fiver is getting himself in a right old tizzy. With less than three weeks to go until the Human Rights World Cup kicks off, The Fiver’s bucket hat-wearing stereotypical Welsh cousin is devouring Pathé News re-runs of the last time his team qualified for the finals of Fifa’s global jamboree, going out in the quarter-finals of Sweden 1958. Having caused quite a seismic shock by making the knockout stages, Wales were without the great John Charles when they faced Brazil and went down by the most slender of margins, the first international goal ever scored by a young flash-in-the-pan named Pelé.
While Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Fiver has high hopes that Gareth Bale, Kieffer Moore and chums may emulate or even better the feats of Ivor Allchurch, Terry Medwin and their teammates 74 years ago, his days supporting his country as most people know it could be numbered. The Football Association of Wales (FAW) is considering a patriotic rebrand and might rename the team Cymru – the Welsh name for Wales – after the World Cup.
Having long referred to their team by the C-word in their internal and external communications, the powers that be at FAW HQ have decided they might follow the lead of Türkiye in renaming themselves for future tournaments. “The team should always be called Cymru, that’s what we call it here,” said their head honcho Noel Mooney, an Irishman who is working towards fluency in Welsh. “Our view at the moment is that domestically we’re clearly called Cymru. That’s what we call our national teams. If you look at our website, how we talk about ourselves, we are very much Cymru.”
While any prospective change will not be undertaken without consultation with different stakeholders including but not limited to the Welsh Assembly and Uefa, it seems a natural next step for a national football team and fanbase that are currently having the time of their lives and have recently embraced Dafydd Iwan’s spine-tingling Welsh language folk song Yma O Hyd as their unofficial pre-match anthem. There would, of course, be other, alphabetical benefits when it comes to the Cymru delegation’s seating arrangements at the draws for major tournaments.
“We sit by the Ukrainians all the time and that’s nice because we’ve become good friends with them,” said Mooney. “But we would like to sit by the Croatians and the Czechs a bit more.” Of course they would also be sitting in close proximity to Belgium, whose midfielder Kevin De Bruyne will surely welcome the mooted name-change after stating last month that he is “bored” with constantly having to play Wales.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Ever since I left France, you have nothing to talk about. France needs me, I don’t need France. Even if you have Mbappé, Neymar and Messi, it doesn’t help you because you don’t have God” – who else but Zlatan Ibrahimovic?
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FIVER LETTERS
“Arsenal are top of the table after 12 games. Erling Haaland does not score. Liverpool lose at home … to Leeds. Chelsea lose 4-1 to … Brighton. I can safely say that I do not understand football anymore. All that is left is for Qatar to win the HRWC” – Krishna Moorthy.
“Given the first instalment gave us a thrashing, a tactical mishap, blistering hot schadenfreude, a memorable quote and thus so many talking points, there is only one way to refer to the matchups of Graham Potter’s Chelsea and some bloke’s Brighton, from now on: El Guardianistico” – Jon Millard.
“Bravo! I wanted to echo fully the letter contents from Jason Palivoda (Friday’s letters) – actually with interest given the appalling skullduggery of even staging a winter World Cup – and I won’t be troubling the viewership statistics at all. A proper winter break lies ahead for some of us punters” – Mike Cornwell.
“Thanks for giving us a sight on Friday of what seems to be a large-scale ceramic representation of the World Cup mascot. It looks like an especially ugly giant ashtray with the boiled head of one of the Ninja Turtles attached, a combination all but defeats any attempt to find a useful allegory for it. I suppose we could go for what happens when you match up crass avarice with cynical manipulation, but that might be unfair to tobacco manufacturers and children’s toy-makers” – Charles Antaki.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Charles Antaki.
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