There’s a hell of a lot of talk about the World Cup at the minute, and not just about it being in winter. But as we gear up for this year’s tournament, there’s talk of even more changes – including one team’s name.
That’s right, this year is likely to be the last time we see ‘Wales’ on the list, as the country is planning to changing its team name following this year’s World Cup. Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales, and is already used by the Football Association of Wales (FAW).
Football officials are now gearing up to ask for Cymru to be internationally recognised as the team’s name. FAW chief executive Noel Mooney said: ‘The team should always be called Cymru, that’s what we call it here.
‘Our view at the moment is that domestically we’re clearly called Cymru. That’s what we call our national teams. If you look at our website, how we talk about ourselves, we are very much Cymru.’
Wales would be following in the footsteps of Turkey, which requested to the United Nations in January this year to have its name recognised as Türkiye in all international tournaments. The UN agreed to the rebrand in June.
Mooney added: ‘You’ve seen countries like Azerbaijan, Turkey and others use their own language. They’re quite strong on it and we spoke to the Turkish at the Euro 2024 draw about it.’
Wales will compete in the World Cup this year, starting with a match against the USA on November 21. The team won against Ukraine in May, landing them a place in the finals this winter.
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