In the end, Gareth Bale decided it was better to burn than fade. It’s a choice worthy of a gamer supernova, able to shine as brightly as any player of his generation when he’s at his best.
Bale retired on Monday at the relatively tender age of 33. It was a shock only because he insisted shortly after Wales’ World Cup group stage elimination in Qatar that he would continue. The sad truth is that recently his body has been showing signs of wear and tear not from the miles traveled, but from the blistering speeds he reached.
– Wales star Gareth Bale retires from professional football aged 33
It was at the San Siro on October 20, 2010 that Bale announced himself to the world, and those of us on that night will never forget it. Tottenham would eventually lose 4-3 to Inter Milan, but Bale’s hat-trick demonstrated a mix of devastation and defiance that would come to encapsulate his career.
Spurs were down 4-0 and playing to 10 men after a disastrous first half, but in a rough atmosphere with the nerazzurri eyeing complete humiliation, a 21-year-old left-back has somehow found the courage to play with complete freedom. His hat-trick in the second half was no fluke; instead, it was the product of its haunting pace and straightforward style.
Bale darted down the left and fired a low shot, like an arrow, past Julius Caesar with striking efficiency, not once or twice, but three times. In the reverse match a fortnight later, he tormented Inter again, starring in a 3-1 win that had the crowd chanting “Taxi to Maicon!” as one of the most respected defenders in the game has been reduced to a joke.
Clive Allen was the assistant coach to then Spurs manager Harry Redknapp that season. “Surprisingly, Inter didn’t seem to have a specific plan for him,” Allen said of the second leg. “We predicted in the days before the game that they could double or tag him. However, they left Maicon at one-on-one.”
It would be the last time an opponent failed to plan for Bale.
The thin, almost forlorn teenager who joined from Southampton at left back and failed to win any of Tottenham’s first 24 Premier League games has become one of the most feared players in the game; his remarkable 2012–13 campaign yielded 21 goals and persuaded Real Madrid to pay a world record fee of £85.3m to bring Bale to the Bernabéu Stadium that summer.
By this time, supporters had resorted to extreme measures. Bale remains the only player in memory to leave the field in the middle of a lung-bursting run, pushed by a defender terrified of the run he had started but still able to maintain his balance and poise to reach the ball he threw it into space before delivering the most devastating final product.
The Copa del Rey final in April 2014 was the apotheosis of this particular skill. Marc Bartra the victim, Barcelona the vanquished. He also did the same against Iceland for Wales a month earlier.
Bale would spend nine years at Real Madrid, accumulating five Champions League triumphs, three LaLiga titles and three Club World Cups. In October 2016, he reportedly signed a contract that made him the highest-paid player in world football, but among madridistasBale was never worshiped in the same way as Cristiano Ronaldo, whose talent and ego demanded that he share center stage with no one else.
For many years, Ronaldo consistently reached a level that only Lionel Messi could match with any regularity, and Bale’s career, increasingly hampered by injuries, became about unique moments – lightning bolts punctuating the enveloping darkness his time in Madrid had become. resembled.
Oh my, how brilliant those flashes were: the free kicks, the solo runs, the volleys. Bale’s strike in the 2018 Champions League Final against Liverpool was a goal so impressive that it is etched in the memory forever. He started that game on the bench and ended up immortalized as part of one of Real’s greatest teams of all time.
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How impressive was Gareth Bale’s career?
Mark Ogden reflects on Gareth Bale’s career after he announced his retirement from professional football.
Bale’s career at the club would never again reach such heights, and accusations that he was not applying himself to Real Madrid became the prevailing narrative: one of those celebrations during his tour of duty in Wales in which Bale held a banner “Wales, golf, Madrid – in that order” it was the final straw in his deteriorating relationship with the club’s supporters.
Bale is certainly not ignorant of his own image and status, but he has never played the PR game. He likes golf, so he’ll play. What shone through the latter part of his career, however, was a genuine love and affection for Wales, something that was always there in his early years. As he grew older, the opportunity to take his country to major tournaments became his driving force.
Euro 2016 marked Wales’ first appearance in 58 years, and they reached the semi-finals with Bale at the heart of it, scoring three times. Attempts to reach a second Euro and a first World Cup began to drive his decisions at club level: a vacant loan back to Tottenham for the 2020-21 season with just seven matches preceded a move to Los Angeles FC, where won the MLS Cup in what turned out to be his last game for the club as a professional.
But all the while he looked like a thoroughbred going out for the occasional stretch to brush away cobwebs, biding his time for the bigger races to come. Wales successfully reached the overdue Euro 2020 final, but it was on reaching the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the country’s first for 64 years, that Bale took his homeland to places they could only dream of. .
Wales have become their refuge away from the turmoil of Madrid and they, in turn, have embraced the starring role, reveling in the pressure of taking a side made up largely of lesser talent from the lower divisions to, finally, a World Cup. However, he was a shadow of his best in Qatar, scoring his country’s only goal from the penalty spot against the United States, and after an ineffective display against Iran, Bale was substituted injured at half-time in the defeat to England.
It was a stage befitting the player, even if it lacked a curtain call-worthy performance. Bale’s decline had begun and he had no interest in raging against the end of the light.
Bale ends his career with 41 goals from 111 caps and a strong case for being Wales’ greatest ever player. No one who has amassed 18 of the sport’s most coveted trophies could be accused of lacking hunger, determination or dedication, but Bale chose to compartmentalize his talent. He sought a balanced life, joy away from club play on the golf course or the extraordinarily close camaraderie of his Wales teammates.
Some wanted more than one player capable of such winning genius. But that’s always the problem with anything that shines so brightly: the world seems so much darker without it.
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