Wales football

We look at the special connection between Wales fans and their national football team who are World Cup bound.

"The main reason you go there is to win matches, that is the priority. I regard us as a movement, not just a federation, but we need to articulate what we want, make our game even better, put in conditions that enable us to be at the very top table of world football on a regular basis." "We’ve just got to be mindful of the fact that the average supporter doesn’t have an endless budget. "As ambassadors, they are second to none, and that reflects in the demographic of the games. "We run a business here so it is a discussion we have," Evans explains. It is a balancing act but the FAW seem to be taking the long-term sustainable approach. "I think they know they have a bigger responsibility to grow the game here," Evans says. "The Welsh language is important to us. "The rugby was ingrained, when it was an international everyone was interested, so how could we at least try and do the same with football?" Mark Evans is the FAW's head of football operations and says: "The fan culture we’ve got now and everything we do around it is the most important thing, even more so than the players and the team performances. I think it was just a reflection of the atmosphere around the game during what we would call rather bleak periods." Former FAW chief executive Jonathan Ford appointed Speed at a time when the association wanted Welsh football to be part of every day for the public.