GARETH BALE collected five Champions League winner’s medals with Real Madrid, scoring in two finals, including an extraordinary bicycle kick against Liverpool in 2018.
So you’d be hard-pressed to describe the Welshman’s nine-year stint at the Bernabeu as any sort of failure.
Yet Bale left the Spanish capital largely unloved. Chiefly because he made it clear Real were not his favourite team and that football wasn’t even his favourite sport.
Bale was ‘The Golfer’, who loved playing for Wales, but never Real — a remote figure who never embraced the language or culture.
A man who never seemed to fully appreciate what it was to play for the world’s most famous club and who outstayed his welcome as a bench-warming trouserer of fortunes.
As Jude Bellingham becomes the latest British footballer to roll up at the Bernabeu, it is clear the England midfielder is learning from Bale’s mistakes.
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This country’s most expensive footballer is still a gangly Brummie teenager — he turns 20 next week — and so you might have imagined him to look a little awkward at last week’s media unveiling.
Especially as he was inheriting Zinedine Zidane’s famed No 5 shirt and had just signed his six-year contract in a room with “14 European Cups staring at me”.
But while no footballer is judged primarily on his media performances, Bellingham’s appearance was a triumph.
He was humble and gracious, likeable and amusing.
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He blew sunshine up a prominent Spanish-based English journalist — a genuine rather than cynical move — and had a demanding local press corps eating out of his hand.
“A Galactico for the next ten years,” was one newspaper’s prediction.
But ‘Galactico’ became a byword for an era when Real stockpiled famous, experienced players with commercial clout, while never producing a balanced team and rarely winning anything.
Bellingham is part of an exciting Real rebuild centring on youth.
Eduardo Camavinga, 20, Aurelien Tchouameni, 23, and Bellingham will eventually replace the midfield triangle of Luka Modric, 37, Toni Kroos, 33, and the already-departed 31-year-old Casemiro.
Kylian Mbappe, 24, may well arrive too because Real remains the des res of the world’s best young players, whatever the Premier League’s lure.
It helps that Bellingham had already illuminated a World Cup and spent three years at Borussia Dortmund, sometimes captaining a mighty club in front of the Westfalenstadion’s vast Yellow Wall.
Those kind of experiences tend to knock the shyness out of a kid.
In Dortmund, he befriended old club legends, sought their advice and became part of the fabric, rather than just another foreign player passing through.
In Madrid, Bellingham has hired an FA player-liaison officer to work for him full-time as he settles in — a move which suggests he wants to impress off the pitch too.
Many are surprised Bellingham chose Real, rather than a move back to England. Yet those close to him insist this has always been his dream.
As with many of his generation, his formative experiences of watching football came during the peak years of the Messi-Ronaldo El Clasicos.
There would have been far more replica Real Madrid and Barcelona shirts around the playing fields of Birmingham than those of Liverpool or the Manchester clubs.
The fixtures for the next LaLiga season are released tomorrow and Bellingham will be eagerly seeking out the dates when he will face champions Barca and become part of that grand and bitter rivalry.
Bellingham, who left Birmingham City at 16, has never played in the Premier League and is unlikely to do so until he is in his mid-to-late 20s.
That is remarkable for the finest English footballer of his generation during an era of supreme Premier League financial dominance.
It does, though, suggest a bravery, curiosity, and independence of thought which will serve him well.
There should still be some caution. Bellingham is a high-mileage player, with a phenomenal 200 senior appearances in club and international football as a teenager.
He has missed England’s last two matches with a long-standing knee problem and players who play too much, too early, often fail to last the distance.
But like Bale before him, Bellingham has the talent, adaptability, attitude and physique to become a major success in Madrid.
He might not end up with five Champions League winner’s medals, but Bellingham is very likely to discover the affection and acceptance which eluded Bale.
Walk tall, Tyler
MARTIN TYLER may have been the voice of English football’s bold new era of world domination, as Sky’s lead commentator since the Premier League’s inception 31 years ago.
But one of the chief reasons why he was such a success was his strong bond with the game’s roots.
Tyler delayed his move into broadcast journalism by several years be- cause he was a useful centre-forward for Corinthian Casuals.
And he continued to coach at non-league sides such as Woking, the club he has always supported, and Dartford while calling matches in the world’s richest league.
This brought him authenticity to go with his eloquence.
Tyler — who is leaving Sky aged 77 but insisting he has not retired from commentating — will be missed.
O’Neil sacking so gobsmacking
GARY O’NEIL and Bournemouth felt a perfect match — understated, overachieving and entertaining.
And while there have been some savagely unexpected managerial sackings which have worked out well for clubs, O’Neil’s dismissal — after he saved the club from relegation — suggests a new American ownership with serious delusions of grandeur.
Just win the ball Poste-haste
WHEN Spurs appointed Ange Postecoglou as their new manager, Celtic fans told us to expect a treat when watching the Aussie’s revolutionary ‘Angeball’ approach.
Turns out Postecoglou expects his players to run around a lot, win the ball back quickly and try to score a lot of goals — much like every other elite coach.
Which brings us to Kai Havertz — the Chelsea striker pursued by Arsenal.
In a footballing landscape that is obsessed with pace, here is a modern-day Dimitar Berbatov, who is all about subtlety of touch, slowing the game down, finding the time and space to do something different.
Arsenal could do with an out-and-out goalscorer, which Havertz — despite scoring the winner in the 2021 Champions League final — is not.
But his signing could prove a masterstroke from Mikel Arteta. And Arsene Wenger would definitely approve of it.
Treble’s all-rounder
GOOD to see Jack Grealish becoming Manchester City’s answer to Freddie Flintoff by leading the drinking spree on his club’s open-top bus parade.
If a likeable, good-looking, young multi-millionaire cannot fully enjoy winning the Treble, then what’s the point of being a likeable, good-looking, young multi-millionaire Treble winner?
Next expect Grealish to head out into the Caribbean on a pedalo — Flintoff-style, several sheets to the wind — then become one of our top light entertainers.
Taking a sledge-hammer to wit
WHY all the high-horsemanship from our Australian friends after England bowler Ollie Robinson shouted “f*** off you f***ing p***k” at Usman Khawaja after dismissing the opener at Edgbaston?
Last time I was in Australia, that counted as a warm expression of endearment.
The incident does, though, confirm the greatest myth in cricket — that sledging is often imaginative and witty.
The slow must go on
WHILE the fast-scoring of England’s Bazball approach thrills the nation, Dom Sibley — ditched by the national team two years ago — ground his way to the slowest century in County Championship history.
It took Surrey opener Sibley almost nine hours to reach three figures.
As a display of ‘b****cks-to-the-zeitgeist’ contrariness, it takes some beating.
But it worked. Surrey reached a target of 501 to beat Kent.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
