LILLE, France -- Wales arrived here on a rainy afternoon, after a short flight and a bus ride from their picturesque base camp in Dinard on the Brittany coast. In Thursday's quiet, they slipped through the tunnel that tomorrow will shelter them before the biggest international game of their lives. They didn't yet have to share the pitch with fearsome Belgium, their quarterfinal opponents and, after four mixed results in as many years, among their most familiar foes. They took to the new turf under the closed roof at the Stade Pierre Mauroy and stared.
Ashley Williams was the first on the grass, and he crouched to touch it.