Wales

Wales is rugby country, they say, but football tells one of Europe's most peculiar stories there. The big three, Cardiff, Swansea and Wrexham, the most talked about club on the planet since its Hollywood takeover, play in the English system, leaving the Cymru Premier, founded in 1992, to village and small town clubs fighting every year for a place in European qualifiers. It is community football in its purest state, with grounds beside hillsides, crowds in the hundreds and impossible stories like that of The New Saints, a club based in England and record holder of Welsh titles. The national team makes up for its scale with soul: a 1958 World Cup quarter final run with John Charles, the epic Euro 2016 semi final with Bale and Ramsey, and the 2022 World Cup return, always carried by an anthem sung a cappella by an entire country. Yma o Hyd: we are still here. On Hoopster, Wales debuts through the border saints.