Welsh captain Gareth Bale has described his nation's return to the World Cup after a 64-year absence as 'a Hollywood script that you wouldn’t believe' in a new ITV documentary.

The Los Angeles FC player and five-time Champions League winner talks about heading to his first ever World Cup in Against The Odds: Wales - The 64 Year Wait, which airs on ITV4 on Monday November 14 at 9pm.

Speaking after Wales beat Ukraine to qualify for the tournament in Qatar, which begins on November 20, Bale says he loves to play with his old friends from the Welsh youth system, 'no matter how life was on the pitch at our clubs.'

He says: “There’s been a lot of missed opportunities where we could have qualified and never did. To play with your mates as I do, having grown up with them in the youth system in Wales has been a fun time I think.

"No matter how life was on the pitch at our clubs we really enjoy playing together. It’s a Hollywood script that you wouldn’t believe. From where we are now to when we started out, if you’d offered me half of that I’d have bitten your hand off.”

Bale also speaks about the legacy former manager Gary Speed, who died in 2011, left behind:

“If Gary Speed was here with us now he would be proud of what we’ve achieved, not just on the pitch but off it. Qualifying for the last three of four major tournaments it’s what dreams are made of and I’m sure he’s looking down on us with a big smile and happy that Welsh football is in a great place. Gary Speed’s vision was to grow the FAW, not just the football, but the infrastructure. Building a training base, having a high-performance centre and recovery centre, just like a top club.”

The show is part of the Against The Odds series, produced by ITV and funded by Coral, which has also featured jockeys Hollie Doyle and Johnny Murtagh, former darts world champion Gerwyn Price, goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel and World Cup winner Cesc Fabregas prop telling their stories.

The programme also features contributions from former coach Chris Coleman, current manager Robert Page, Hal Robson-Kanu, Cliff Jones, Aaron Ramsey and the singer and composer of fans' anthem Yma o Hyd, Dafydd Iwan Jones.

Speaking about Wales’s play-off against Ukraine to reach the World Cup, Robert Page explains how he had to get his players into the right mindset to win the game:

“We couldn’t allow sentiment to get in the way. It's disgraceful what’s going on. Watching the news and seeing what kids and families are going through is horrendous but we also wanted to achieve qualification for the World Cup so we had to strip the emotions out of it and be ruthless and that was the message before the game. It was the proudest moment of my short managerial career.”

He also pays tribute to the connection the supporters have with his team's players:

“It’s been a long time coming now for the supporters to get another opportunity. The connection we have between the supporters and the players, we never had that when I played. We’ve got players that would walk down the M4 on broken glass to play for the country.”

Cliff Jones, who was part of the Wales team that reached the quarter final of the 1958 World Cup, visits teammate Terry Medwin in the documentary and says of fellow Spurs legend Bale:

“Gareth now is known as the Welsh Wizard but I am the original Welsh Wizard. Harry Kane just jumped above me in the scoring records at Tottenham, but who is he anyway? We did ourselves proud in 1958. For me putting on that red shirt was my biggest honour. Gareth Bale, he’s a great player, a great lad and he would get in any team…don’t worry about that but he wouldn’t get Terry’s place in the team. Sorry Gareth, you’d have to wait a bit!”

On encountering Pele in the quarter final of that World Cup, he says:

“They had this young little player called Pele and he’s picked the ball up and I’ll never forget it, he went past three Welsh defenders, smashed the ball, Jack Kelsey tipped it over the bar and we thought who was this kid, nobody had heard of him. It really was a privilege to say you were on the pitch to see the emergence of the greatest player that’s ever played the game.”

Former Wales manager Chris Coleman, who led the team to the Euro 2016 semi-finals, talks about finding his feet after getting the job:

“I definitely underestimated the situation when I went into it. It took me a year and a half before I found my feet. My wife and family got me through a very difficult moment and obviously after that everything fell into place.

"Then we qualified for the Euros in 2016. We had a lot of unlikely heroes. We had Owen Fon Williams who was at the time playing in Scotland, who was playing the guitar next to Gareth Bale, who at the time was the most expensive player in the world. In terms of careers and where they were, the level was a big contrast. That was the secret of us - it wasn’t just one player.”

On his team's victory in the quarter-final against Belgium at Euro 2016, Coleman says:

“Up until the quarter final we had a pretty special experience, considering we were labelled as cannon-fodder. We felt we had a good chance… I don’t think anyone else thought we did! Belgium were ranked as number one in the world so we knew we were up against it. I remember people thinking it was the best thing for Belgium. it was the worst thing because we took the game to them.”

On his goal against Belgium Hal Robson-Kanu says:

“The ball landed towards me and I touched it with my right foot. My back was to the goal, it was just pure instinct to find half a yard in front of the box. All of a sudden it's between me and Courtois and it was just simple to put the ball in the back of the net.

“When you don’t play for any of the top teams in any sort of league, to have that experience was just life-changing.”

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