GARETH BALE should be a hero in Madrid.
Seven silverware-laden years have brought 12 major trophies, including four Champions League crowns, for the club he always dreamed of playing for.
Zidane will be keeping a close eye on Bale ahead of Real’s clash against Man CityCredit: Reuters
The Welshman is also the only player to score TWO winning goals in Champions League finals.
His stunning overhead kick to finish off Liverpool in 2018 was one of the greatest strikes in the game’s history.
Yet Bale remains an enigma. Unloved and seemingly unwanted.
A prophet without any honour in his adopted home.
And the Aunt Sally of the Bernabeu faithful and Madrid media who seem to delight in taking any chance to have a dig.
Yet in the absence of the injured Eden Hazard, guess who Zinedine Zidane needs to get him out of a hole against Manchester City this evening?
The very same Gareth Bale that the Real boss appeared to be making it his ambition to get rid of.
Bale’s limited Spanish may not, in truth, reflect too well on him.
He has been in the country since 2013 and might have spent a little more time poring over his language books than his putting technique.
‘THE PLAYER WITH PUNCH’
But if the sum total of Bale’s flaws is he is “The Golfer”, something of an outsider in what has always been a cliquey dressing room — just ask Jose Mourinho about that — it hardly makes him deserving of the stick that constantly comes his way.
Madrid’s biggest-selling sports paper Marca made what appeared to be an admission of guilt in a piece yesterday headlined “Hoping for the Bale of the Big Nights”.
Marca writes that Zidane, for all his frustrations with Bale, recognised that “if he is inspired, he is the player with the most punch in the squad”.
Yet, as always when Bale is the subject, there is a sting in the tale as Marca described him as “lost for the cause” and warned he would be under a Bernabeu “magnifying glass”.
Bale knows the finger could be pointed at him if Real lose to CityCredit: AFP or licensors
Marca added: “Undoubtedly, a great night would help him reconcile the doubters, who have not seen him fully involved in recent games.
“The reality is that since those two goals in the Kiev final of 2018 against Liverpool, and since then without Cristiano Ronaldo, the ex-Tottenham man has not replaced the Portuguese as everyone expected.”
Bale is not part of the inner circle, that much is clear.
Asked ahead of tonight’s last-16, first-leg clash about the Welshman’s likely starting role, Sergio Ramos picked his words carefully, but knowing exactly how they would be interpreted.
Ramos said: “As captain, it is not my job to judge what players do in their personal lives. Certain decisions will have to be made.
“We are old enough and professional enough to know what we have to do.”
It was hardly a ringing endorsement of a seven-season team-mate.
Bale will shrug it off, get out and play. It is what he does best anyhow.
The flag he paraded around Cardiff in November, carrying words in the order of Wales, Golf, Real Madrid, was a way of sticking two fingers up at those who he knows will never warm to him.
But he is equally aware how they will stand in praise, for a fleeting moment, if he delivers again tonight.
And when he does depart, his pockets laden with gold and his life sorted, Bale will have done far more for Madrid than most of them.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
