BALE IN LEAGUE OF OWN

THE history books will judge this Real Madrid team differently now.

They will also remember Gareth Bale in a different light to the one in which he is often portrayed.

This, after all, is a player who has won four Champions League titles in five years and will go down as one of Britain’s most successful exports.

It is an incredible achievement, highlighted by Bale’s 64th-minute wonder goal just three minutes after coming on as a substitute. He hung in the air, then unleashed a stunning overhead kick that will go down as perhaps the best goal in Champions League history.

The Welshman deserves more respect and credit for what he has achieved in the goldfish bowl of Madrid, signed as Cristiano Ronaldo’s long-term replacement and yet so often suffering in his shadow.

Ronaldo refuses to go quietly, driven on by his quest for even more greatness because this Real Madrid have an incredible winning habit in the Champions League.

Every time they are written off, they reply with another trophy and three in a row marks them down as the club’s most successful team since the late 1950s.

And yet it is always about fine margins, because defeat could have spelled the end of an era for this Zinedine Zidane team.

That is why we struggle to appreciate them because, for all their failings in the domestic competitions, they sweep all before them in Europe. And that is all that matters to them.

They just know how to get the job done. Look at Sergio Ramos’s darkarts challenge on Mo Salah – taking Liverpool’s most dangerous player out of the game.

From that moment, Liverpool lost some of their belief and threat, while Real Madrid stepped up a gear.

They had too much experience, too much knowhow and class.

And, in Bale, they had someone with a point to prove, adding a second late on. No less spectacular for poor Karius’s second blunder.