As Bad as Things Got; Wales at the Euros, 16th November 1994

They may not be there this time, but Wales still get an inclusion into this series for their misadventures in attempting to qualify for Euro 96, when a trip to Georgia very much got in their way.

It could have all been so different. A team that had failed to qualify for every major international tournament it had entered over the previous three and a half decades had just missed out on World Cup qualification, only for the next opportunity to come up to be hosted by the only country with which it shares a border. There had been several close shaves over the previous two decades or longer, but this time around they had a talented team, including one of the most exciting young players in the world at the time.

If there was a tournament that a team was destined to reach, then surely it should have been Wales and the 1996 European Championships. Somehow, though, the legacy of the team’s narrowly failed attempt to make the 1994 World Cup finals was squandered in the most spectacular way possible, with the Football Association of Wales contriving to find a way to turn a team that was the width of a crossbar from making the finals of the World Cup into something approaching an also-ran for the next two decades.

It took just 364 days for Welsh football to descend from its highest height. On the 17th November 1993, they’d been tied at 1-1 with Romania in their final World Cup qualifying match when Paul Bodin stepped up to take a penalty kick. Wales needed a win to qualify, but as a nation held its breath, Bodin’s kick bounced out off the bar and into infamy. Romania won the match 2-1 and Wales' best chance of qualifying for the finals of a major tournament since 1958 vanished into the night.