Remarkably, all four home nations \u2013 England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales qualified for the tournament. A 4-0 aggregate score in a play-off with Israel saw Wales reach the finals, and presented Bowen \u2013 the wholehearted Arsenal skipper \u2013 and Kelsey with a chance to make a name for themselves. Except that in the pre-television era, the publicity for the tournament was rather low-key.<\/p>\n
“There was little or no press interest at all,” Kelsey later said. The Swansea-born stopper was arguably the standout Gunners player of his generation. After replacing veteran George Swindin in goal, Kelsey\u2019s superb agility and reflexes saw him play a key part in Arsenal\u2019s 1952-53 title-winning season. But the rest of the \u201850s was a challenging time for the Gunners, with no more trophies forthcoming.<\/p>\n
In Sweden, the Welsh acquitted themselves well, drawing with Hungary, Mexico and the World Cup hosts.<\/p>\n \n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n “We liked the climate,” the Maesteg-born Dave Bowen said. “It was just like playing in Wales!” The Welsh then defeated Hungary 2-1 in a play-off game to progress to the quarter-finals and a match to savour with an emerging Brazil side, containing forwards Didi, Garrincha and a 17-year-old Pel\u00e9. <\/p>\n “We\u2019d never heard of him (Pele),” laughed Jack Kelsey during an interview with Brian Glanville. “But we were about to.” <\/p>\n For much of the Quarter Final, Brazil lay siege to Kelsey\u2019s goal, who stood firm. He tipped away two thunderbolts from Didi and Garrincha. Brazil fans later nicknamed Kelsey: ‘The cat with the magnetic paws.\u2019 <\/p>\n But the Arsenal \u2018keeper was powerless to stop Pele controlling the ball neatly on his chest and squeezing the ball in on 70 minutes. 1-0. \u2018If Jack had saved that, the world would never have heard of Pele,\u2019 laughed the Maesteg-born Dave Bowen. <\/p>\n Wales, along with Scotland had been eliminated in the last eight, and returned home. Brazil won the tournament and retained their trophy in 1962.<\/p>\n There was no fanfare for the Welsh team when they arrived home at Swansea train station either. \u2018Where have you been? On holiday?\u2019 inquired the ticket inspector of the returning players. “No egos in those days,” Jack Kelsey smiled. <\/p>\n It would be 64 years before Wales qualified for the World Cup in 2022. Dave Bowen went on to steer Northampton Town from the Fourth Division to the top flight, and Jack Kelsey was Arsenal\u2019s commercial director, running the club shop at Highbury until he retired in 1989.<\/p>\n \n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There will be 15 Arsenal players heading to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, Canada and the USA, continuing our long and historic connection with the biggest international tournament. But who was the first Gunner to head to a finals? Historian Jon Spurling takes a look into our steeped history with the World Cup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Every Arsenal player called up for 2026 World Cup <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n Your Arsenal guide to the 2026 FIFA World Cup <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n