When Pele Broke Our Hearts: Wales and the 1958 World Cup

By Mario Risoli

Book Overview

When Pel Broke Our Hearts is the definitive story of the Welsh team's remarkable 1958 World Cup campaign, the first and only time Wales has qualified for football's premier tournament. Wales qualified for Sweden as representatives of the Middle East/Asia group by beating Israel 4-0 on aggregate in a special play-off following the refusal of its Arab neighbours to play the fledgling Jewish state. The Welsh team's haphazard preparations for the World Cup amounted to a kick-about on Hyde Park using jumpers for goalposts but, in John Charles, Wales had the world's most expensive player and one of the finest footballers the world has ever seen. Against all the odds, and led by Manchester United assistant manager Jimmy Murphy who'd stepped-in at Old Trafford after the Munich air disaster months earlier, Wales fought through to a quarter-final against Brazil, but without the injured Charles - who'd been kicked to pieces by Hungary in the previous game - the team struggled to score and were finally beaten by the first World Cup goal scored by the 17-year-old Pel .

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1902719026
• ISBN13: 9781902719023
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: St. David's Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 8.4"