{"id":245110,"date":"2025-07-07T11:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T11:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/245110\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T11:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T11:18:12","slug":"the-reason-why-wales-players-pose-for-bizarre-team-photos-before-matches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/245110\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reason Why Wales Players Pose For Bizarre Team Photos Before Matches"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wales National Team<\/a> have a history of posing badly for squad photos at major international tournaments, and the women’s team recently reminded everyone of that fact before making their long-awaited Women’s European Championship debut on Saturday afternoon, which ended in a 3-0 defeat against the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

Women’s Super League<\/a> stars Vivianne Miedema and Victoria Pelova scored just after the second half commenced, before Esmee Brugts struck on the hour mark to ensure that Oranje Leeuwinnen finished with a flourish at Lucerne’s Swissporarena. A dominant performance on what was a milestone day for Wales is the talk of the town, but discourse has also surrounded the nation’s bizarre pre-match tradition. See their awkward squad photo below:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The chaotic pre-match squad photo has become part of tournament tradition for Wales these days, but some may not be aware of the origin story behind the random ritual. It has been pictured at both women\u2019s and men\u2019s international tournaments since Euro 2016, when the men made it all the way to the semi-finals in France with the likes of Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bale<\/a> starring.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/p>\n

\"EPL_Greatest<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t10 Greatest Womens’ Players in Football History [Ranked]
\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

From Olympic Games gold medallists to World Cup legends, these are the finest 10 women’s footballers of all time. <\/p>\n

Story Behind Wales’ Bizarre Pre-Match Squad Photos<\/strong><\/p>\n

It has previously been a good luck charm for the side<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Wales\u00a0players<\/p>\n

Speaking back in 2016 – when the images first started to go viral – Joe Ledley outlined that they noticed they were getting “lucky” whenever they took an unusual squad photo.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just not very good at them. At first, we didn\u2019t look into it, but then gradually a few photos got together, and it was awful, so we just thought we may as well keep it the same,\u201d he said, as per Belfast Live<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been lucky for us too. It\u2019s not really superstitious, but I don\u2019t think we will have a proper photo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonny Williams backed up Ledley\u2019s claims in 2016, adding: \u201cI wasn\u2019t there at the last game, but it looked on the TV like it\u2019s got worse. I\u2019ve been involved in a couple, but they were by accident, to be fair.<\/p>\n

“I just don\u2019t think we\u2019re very good at them, and now we\u2019re just doing it for banter I think, but I don\u2019t know how much further we can go….unless we leave Wayne Hennessey on his own at the back!\u201d<\/p>\n

The women’s side will have at least two more opportunities to produce some more wild squad photos, with their remaining two group fixtures coming against France and England. However, with both these nations among the favourites for glory next month, the chances of Wales progressing to the knockout stages are relatively slim as they sit bottom of Group D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wales National Team have a history of posing badly for squad photos at major international tournaments, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-245110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114811682161841501","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}