The summer that changed Welsh football

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A decade on from Euro 2016, BBC Sport Wales spoke with key figures in the campaign to retrieve, in detail, the inside story of the tournament that transformed Welsh football.

Origin: a fome of 58 years

To understand the weight of Euro 2016, one must go back to 1958, the last year that Wales had played a World Cup - until then, its only major international competition.

Under the leadership of coach Chris Coleman, a group that featured Gareth Bale as its star player alongside established names in both the Premier League and Championship made their way through to the Euro qualifiers.

Passage: a campaign in France

Drawn into a group with England, Slovakia and Russia, Wales surpassed expectations to advance in first place.In the knockout stages they beat Northern Ireland in the round of 16 and then went on to play one of the most memorable nights of the tournament: their turn-around against Belgium, at that time one of Europe's strongest teams, entitled to Hal Robson-Kanu's anthological goal which put two defenders down with an unforgettable twist before finishing.

In the semi-final, the adventure ended in front of Portugal, future champions of that edition. The score was 2-0 for the Portuguese, who then beat the hosts in the final. For Wales, however, the elimination did not extinguish anything: a euphoric crowd with their anthems sung loudly on the streets became one of two symbols of that Euro, alongside competitive football and the familiar atmosphere Coleman built in his dressing room.

O que mudou desde então (What has changed since then)

A report from BBC Sport Wales, produced with accounts of those who lived that summer inside, shows that 2016 created a structural legacy: Wales returned to qualify for European and World Cups in the following years, something unthinkable before, and interest in the national team grew among a new generation of youngsters who had grown up watching Bale, Aaron Ramsey and company shine in France.

For the Brazilian supporter, who closely followed that semi-final for Portugal, Wales's history is a case study: what serious planning, coherent coaching and united fans can do for a football country which is modest in number of professionals but giant in identity.

Ten years later, Euro 2016 continues to be the watershed moment in which Welsh football has stopped telling stories from 1958 and started writing its own.