Performing his best blend of Knute Rockne and William Wallace, prolific Welsh actor and BBC stalwart Michael Sheen launched into a locker-room speech for the ages Thursday night on the UK’s Sky network.
Tasked by the host of the sports comedy show “A League of Their Own” with pumping up the Wales national soccer team ahead of November’s World Cup, Sheen wasn’t addressing the Gareth Bale-led squad to their faces.
But he might as well have been.
“I have to get in the right head space now,” Sheen said before launching into the rousing speech. “OK.”
Sheen, spreading his arms with his palms open and fingers spread, then delivers a monologue to end all monologues, which you can watch and read below.
“I hear the voices singing. Speed your journey, bois bach,” the “Good Omens” star said, using the Welsh exclamation for “good heavens.”
“One nation, singing with one voice, a song of hope, a song of courage,” Sheen said, having been asked what he would say to the Welsh team specifically before their match with England, which along with the United States and Iran joined Wales in the World Cup’s Group B.
Wales will be led by Bale, the former Real Madrid superstar who signed with the MLS’ Los Angeles FC in June, three weeks after sealing the Welsh national team’s first spot in the World Cup since 1958 with the deciding goal in a 1-0 win over Ukraine.
“A victory song that floats through the valleys, like a red mist, rolls over the mountain tops, like crimson thunder,” Sheen continued. “A red storm is coming to the gates of Qatar.
“It crackles, with the spirit of ’58 and Jimmy Murphy’s boys. It turns the pages of the history books and finds Rob’s page, waiting, still to be written,” Sheen said, referring to Wales coach Rob Page. “What would you right in there, boys? Dare you write your names on that page? We haven’t waited 64 years and come half way around the world to be troubled by a neighbor from back home.
“When the English coming knock on our door, let’s give them some sugar, boys, let’s give them some Welsh sugar. They’ve always said we are too small, we are too slow, we are too weak, too full of fear. But yma o hyd, you sons of Speed, and they fall around us.
“We are still here.”
