Jose needs Bale the superhero but may find his powers fading
THE most eagerly awaited Bale sequel since Christian squeezed back into his Batman suit for The Dark Knight is coming to a Premier League ground near you soon. Gareth at Spurs – a love rekindled.
Hits on the small screen after their fly-on-the-wall Amazon documentary, Spurs have gone big screen on this one.
The plot is straightforward. Freed from his gilded cage in Madrid, the prodigal son returns. His mission? To bring Champions League football back to North London.
By day, a mild-mannered golf enthusiast; under the lights he is transformed into a soaring beast with special powers – a sublime left foot and searing pace capable of tearing defences apart.
Or at least that’s what he used to do. It has been so long since Bale has been seen on a football pitch it is hard to remember.
It is a one-season project with one overriding goal but will it work?
If you are a Tottenham fan you are electrified by his arrival, a kaleidoscope of treasured memories triggered. If you’re not, then it is a storyline worth sitting down with the popcorn and watching all the same.
There is no denying this represents a cute transaction for the club. For an all-in cost of £15million for the year, with Real Madrid subsidising Bale’s wages, Spurs take back a player they sold as the most expensive footballer in the world seven years ago.
But seven years is a long time and a lot of water has flowed under the Bale bridge since.
From unstoppable torrent in his formative Madrid years, the flow slowed to a dribble through injury and non-selection before becoming a stagnant pool as he was ostracised completely by Zinedine Zidane.
Having finally escaped the Spanish capital, he returns ‘home’ to a vastly different view to the one he left behind. Different stadium, different team-mates, different manager.
And the manager is the key figure here.
In a sense, for Jose Mourinho and
Gareth Bale the challenge at Spurs is the same. Two reduced figures, with doubts now surrounding them, trying to turn back time to an era when they bestrode the footballing world.
How they rub along will be intriguing. They are cut from contrasting cloth – Bale the uncomplicated introvert; Mourinho the charismatic super-ego for whom all the world is a stage. Mourinho has enjoyed success in the past bringing the best out of thirtysomething superstars – Didier Drogba in his second spell at Chelsea; Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Manchester United. How much he can coax out of Bale could define his time at Tottenham.
When he first arrived at the club, Mourinho spoke of his confidence in the players he inherited and how he had all he needed to challenge at the top. Having finished sixth last season, 40 points behind champions Liverpool, that position has evolved and with it the squad.
As they head for Southampton this lunchtime, the early-season signs for Spurs have been less than promising – a home defeat by Everton and a Europa League scare against Lokomotiv Plovdiv before scraping through late on.
THE full ineptitude of the performance was spared those watching on Premier Sports by an intermittent transmission, but the images that managed to escape Bulgaria did not reveal much of an uptick from an opening Premier League display branded lazy by Mourinho.
The problem for Mourinho is that this is his Tottenham now and he stands or falls by it.
If they are lazy, well, that is down to him.
It will inevitably take Bale some time to reach full match fitness after so little first-team football but he will get there.
When he does, we can expect some throwback moments but can he be the catalyst for Champions League qualification?
It is easy to forget that in Bale’s first time around for Tottenham the club only played in the Champions League once and the neighbourhood at the summit of the Premier League has arguably grown even rougher since.
If qualification evolves into a big-six slugfest – and Leicester, Wolves and Everton may all have something to say about that – the task which confronts Spurs is a stiff one.
Liverpool and Manchester City are in another postcode, so if Spurs are to reach the top four they will have to unseat either Manchester United or Chelsea and outlast Arsenal.
With all of those three clubs it is straightforward to plot the direction of travel and to make a case for a season of progress.
With Spurs, the timeline seems to run backwards.
The Batman comparison is not quite right, thinking about it. With Bale and Mourinho it’s more Back To The Future II.
Bale’s loan move promises fun escapism but this movie still ends with Spurs falling short and Mourinho running out of time.