Welsh women carry on tradition of oddball team photo
Wales women's major tournament debut at Euro 2025 might not have gone the way they hoped, but the team are winning over fans with their unusual team photo, carrying on a tradition started by Gareth Bale and the men's team in 2016.
Wales were beaten 3-0 by the Netherlands on Saturday, but it was their tongue-in-cheek photo that got football fans talking.
If traditional team snapshots have players standing arm-in-arm in two tight rows, striking identical poses usually with their game faces on, the Welsh one is none of the above.
Lily Woodham is off to the side holding the team flag and Rhiannon Roberts is crouched in the otherwise all-standing back row.
Only Josie Green and Hannah Cain are arm-in-arm. There is zero sense of formation, random spaces between players, and they all wear cheeky grins.
"The team photo is indeed a tradition, by accident," a Wales team spokesman told Reuters. "Our teams aren't the best at organising themselves for team photos and it's seen amongst our men's and women's teams -- it's not really forced or overly arranged to be a mess."
At the 2016 men's European Championship, Wales reached the semi-finals where they lost to eventual winners Portugal. They also went viral on social media for a haphazard pre-match photo, which the players insisted was accidental.
A string of positive results followed, so rather than attempting to conform, they did the opposite and exaggerated their oddball photo setup.
It has become part superstition, part running joke.
"That's a nice tradition, wholesome, funny, harmless...I love it," someone posted on Reddit's soccer page.
Another poked fun at the team's result against the Netherlands, writing: "Awesome. Also the gaps are representative of their defence right now."
Wales, drawn into arguably the toughest group of Euro 2025, play France on Wednesday before facing England. REUTERS
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