Euro 2016: Gareth Bale revels in 'once in a lifetime opportunity' to make history with Wales

Gareth Bale is 27 years old and must be near the peak of his considerable football powers. He won his second Champions League less than one month ago. Today he will play the biggest match of his life, a European Championship last-16 against Northern Ireland. Win that, and they are in the quarter-finals, matching Wales’ best ever performance in a football tournament.

It would be utterly normal for Bale to approach this game locked in the moment, thinking only of how he and his team-mates are planning to unpick the packed ranks of Northern Irishmen at the Parc des Princes. But to speak to Bale at Wales’ Breton base on Thursday afternoon was to hear a footballer who is very conscious of perspective, and of the context and meaning of this match.

Bale is looking in both directions; back into Welsh football’s mixed history and its long frustrations, but also forward towards the next generation of players and fans. He clearly has a strong sense of legacy, although he did not use that word, and of a responsibility to everyone who has ever invested in Welsh football or who will do so in future.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity if you look at how many times we have been in a tournament before,” said Bale. “We are trying to grab it with both hands, and at the same time trying to enjoy every moment of it. We are trying to ride that wave and do everything for the fans, and give them something to cheer.”

Bale has been admirably honest all tournament, and said this week that Wales’ aim was to lift the trophy in Paris on 10 July. “I don’t think it is bad to think we can win it,” he said. “You don’t enter a competition to play a few games and get knocked out.”

But however well Wales do in the knock-out phase Bale knows that the point is not just their own glory or even delighting their fans. It is about growing and strengthening the Welsh football nation. Only then will they be this good again at tournaments in the future.

“Everybody is waking up and seeing what Welsh football is about,” said Bale, understanding his duty to the future. “Hopefully we can keep doing that. It is not just about this tournament and what is going now, but we want to qualify for other tournaments and grow football in Wales. Hopefully that will give us a better national team in the future as well.”

That sense of history extends both ways and Bale, like the whole Welsh team, feels privileged to do what so many great Welsh players could not between this summer and 1958. Before the Russia game on Monday they watched the new documentary about that Welsh team’s campaign, which taught them how precious this opportunity is to enchant the nation.

“We watched the documentary on the day of the Russia game,” Bale said. “You see what has happened in the past and you don’t want that to be you. You want to succeed, to help the nation grow in football terms. That is a part of our jobs now. Not just for ourselves, and getting the rewards, but to give our nation more of a chance. To give kids the belief that they can go out and play football. That will make our national team stronger in the future.”

“We have had amazing players going through history and seeing the failure, and even being there as fans to see us not quite qualify, it does drive you on even more. Whenever I have played for Wales it has always been my dream to qualify for a major tournament and to test ourselves on the biggest stage.”

Bale is well versed in the story of 1958, of how Wales qualified by beating Israel in a play-off because nobody else would play them. While the respect was obvious, he even managed a joke at their expense. “They didn’t actually qualify, I am just throwing that out there,” he laughed. “They did amazing, an amazing team with amazing players. But I am just saying.” Bale still speaks with Cliff Jones, who tells him that he was ‘the original Welsh Wizard’, not the young man 54 years younger than him.

That team reached the quarter-finals of the 1958 World Cup where they were beaten by the eventual champions Brazil, starring a teenage Pele. “It would be amazing to match it, or if not better it,” Bale said. “That is not our motivation, not something we are thinking about, but if we did it would be amazing.”

It would extremely surprising, but not exactly the shock of the week, if Wales were not to get past Northern Ireland today. They are just as well organised and motivated and have far more quality. Do that and they match the 1958 team. The quarter-final would be against Belgium or Hungary and unless Belgium change managers between now and then they would not have much to fear that night in Lille either.

“Ultimately the goal is to win the tournament, but we understand that the process is a lot more difficult,” Bale said. “We are in a great moment. As I have said before, you really do have to take one game at a time.” But Bale still knows what lies before and behind him as well.