Wales fans danced and partied with pride into the night despite a heartbreaking Euro 2016 semifinal defeat in the nation’s biggest football match ever.
Some 27 000 impassioned fans who watched the 2-0 loss to Portugal on giant screens in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on Wednesday swallowed their devastation and streamed out voicing unabashed delight at how far Wales had come.
“If you can think of every emotion in the world, I’ve felt them all in the last 15 seconds: happiness, anger, sadness, pride,” Conor Wall, 23, from Caerphilly, told AFP.
“No-one expected us to even qualify. You can’t fault us.”
Bouncing around singing in the stadium concourses, fans were ecstatic at the previously unfancied team’s extraordinary run at the 2016 European Championship finals – their best performance since reaching the 1958 World Cup quarterfinals.
“It’s a contradiction of feelings because we’re devastated but we’re so proud,” said Rhian Coles from Cardiff.
“It doesn’t make sense, this feeling. I feel bad for feeling bad – we’ve made history.”
Outside, men whipped off their red Wales football shirts and swung them around their heads, singing “Don’t Take Me Home”, the terrace chant that Welsh fans have taken around France throughout Euro 2016.
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