Wales at the FIFA World Cup

During the preparations for the 1928 Olympic Football Tournament, FIFA ruled that all its member associations must provide "broken time" payments to cover the expenses of players from their country who participated.

In response to what they considered to be unacceptable interference, the football associations of Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland held a meeting at which they agreed to resign from FIFA.

Defeats in their first two matches against England (4–1 at home) and Scotland (2–0 away) meant Wales were no longer able to qualify regardless of the result in their final game against Ireland (IFA).

In their three matches, Wales managed just one point, with a 3–3 draw in Scotland sandwiched between home defeats to England (4–1) and Northern Ireland (2–1), leaving them bottom of the table.

Goals from Des Palmer and Cliff Jones gave Wales a 3–0 lead going into half-time; Manfred Kaiser pulled one back for the East Germans, but it proved to be too great a margin to overcome, and Palmer completed his hat-trick to give Wales a 4–1 win and put them level on points with Czechoslovakia at the top of the group.

A win for East Germany over Czechoslovakia by the right scoreline the following month would see Wales qualify as group winners for their first World Cup.

Wales began with a 1–1 draw with Hungary, John Charles scoring a 27th-minute equaliser after József Bozsik had given the Magyars the lead in the fifth minute.

Ivor Allchurch then gave Wales the lead after half an hour of their second game against Mexico, only for Jaime Belmonte to equalise with a minute left to play.

Because of the tie-breaking criteria in use at the tournament, that result meant that, regardless of the margin of victory, the best Hungary and Mexico could manage would be to force a play-off against Wales for a place in the quarter-finals – a draw would see them both eliminated.

The return leg was played in Madrid a month later with Wales needing to win by a two-goal margin to surpass Spain.

This time, Denmark did not withdraw and beat Wales in the group's opening match in Copenhagen in October 1964, thanks to Ole Madsen scoring the only goal of the game.

Wales played their final qualifier at home to Denmark in Wrexham in December 1965, and a 4–2 win thanks to goals from Wyn Davies, Roy Vernon (2) and Ronnie Rees, meant they finished second in the group, four points behind the Soviet Union.

Despite a 1–0 away loss to Scotland in their opening game in November 1976, Wales managed a 3–0 win at home to Czechoslovakia in March 1977, with goals from Leighton James (2) and Nick Deacy rekindling their hopes of qualification.

With the game at 0–0 with just under a quarter of an hour left to play, Joe Jordan and David Jones challenged for a long throw-in from Asa Hartford in the Wales penalty area.

Both players' hands went up and the ball struck one of them, resulting in referee Robert Wurtz awarding Scotland a penalty, despite the protests of Wales goalkeeper Dai Davies; replays showed the ball had in fact struck Jordan's hand rather than Jones's, discernible by the fact that Jordan was wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt and Jones was wearing short sleeves.

Wales managed just two points in qualifying; after a 1–0 defeat away to the Netherlands in their opening game, they drew 2–2 with Finland and then 0–0 with West Germany, both at home.

Despite losing 5–1 in their opening game away to Romania, Wales bounced back with consecutive wins at home to the Faroe Islands (6–0) and away to Cyprus (1–0), before another defeat away to Belgium (2–0).

That meant Wales were still in contention going into their final match at home to Romania, though they needed to win and hope the RCS did not beat Belgium in the other game in Brussels.

Two minutes later, Gary Speed was fouled by Dan Petrescu in the Romania penalty area, and referee Kurt Röthlisberger pointed to the spot.

In addition to defending champions France, UEFA was allocated 13 guaranteed spots at the tournament, with another potentially going to the winner of a play-off against a team from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

[15] Wales began their qualifying campaign with consecutive draws away to Azerbaijan (1–1)[16] and at home to Northern Ireland (2–2),[17] before losing their next six matches in a row.

First was a 2–0 defeat away to England in the sides' first meeting in 20 years,[18] followed by a 3–2 home loss to Poland in Mark Hughes' last game as manager and Gary Speed's last as captain.

[21] Giggs was on the scoresheet again in the final game, scoring both goals as Wales beat Azerbaijan 2–0 at home to confirm fifth place in the group.

[23] After playing them in their most recent World Cup qualifier almost three years earlier, Wales won their first match of this campaign 1–0 at home to Azerbaijan.

[35] They suffered back-to-back defeats in their first two games at home to Belgium (2–0)[36] and away to Serbia (6–1),[37] before coming from behind with two late goals from Gareth Bale to beat Scotland 2–1 in October 2012.

[43] Wales moved ahead of Macedonia and Scotland with a 1–0 win over the former in October 2013,[44] only to slip back to fifth place behind the latter following a 1–1 draw with already-qualified Belgium in their final game.

Three straight wins then followed – at home to Austria (1–0), and away to Moldova (2–0) and Georgia (1–0) – putting Wales in second place, a point behind Serbia with a game to play.

[46] In qualifying for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Wales were drawn in UEFA Group E along with Belgium, the Czech Republic, Belarus and Estonia.

[47] After losing 3–1 away to Belgium in their opening game in March 2021,[48] Wales went unbeaten in their remaining seven matches to finish second in the group ahead of the Czech Republic and qualify for the play-offs as one of the six seeds.

[58] Against Iran four days later, goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey committed a reckless challenge on Mehdi Taremi; he originally received a yellow card, but it was upgraded to a red after a VAR review.