Wales National Football Team | Photo: Geoff Caddick/AFP
Latvia’s men’s football team’s opponent in the 2024 European Championship qualification, Wales, will consider changing the national team’s international name to Cymru (“Cymru”), or as Wales is called in Welsh, after this year’s World Cup final tournament.
The Football Association of Wales (FAW) already uses Camry in its internal and external communications. The FAW plans to discuss the decision with a number of parties involved, but news agency PA reports that the Welsh have already held informal talks with the Association of European Football Associations (UEFA). “The team should have always been called Camry – as we call it here. There’s still a bit of work to be done in the international arena, so we’ll go to the World Cup as Wales,” FAW chief executive Noel Mooney said.
“I think that next year we will start negotiations with all parties – governments, the board itself, councils and decision-makers, staff, clubs, players. We are a democratic organization and we do not make decisions alone. That is the direction of the talks, but nothing has been decided yet,” continued Mooney. Another representative of this group – Turkey – managed to compete in UEFA tournaments with the name of the country as it is pronounced in Turkish (“Turkiye”, instead of the English “Turkey”).
By changing the name of the national team to Camry, Wales will no longer be alphabetically last of the 55 UEFA national associations. “We are always next to Ukraine, nice because we are good friends. However, I would rather be between Croatia and the Czech Republic,” said Mooney. In addition to Latvia, Wales and Turkey, Croatia and Armenia will also play in subgroup D of the 2024 European Championship qualifiers.
