Second coming sees Bale back in the familiar casting of overpaid blanket stand
NEVER going back tends, in sport, to be a sound principle by which to live. It held true for Robbie Fowler, whose second spell at Liverpool seldom repeated the majesty of his first, and for Mark Spitz, who sought to recapture the joy of his seven Olympic swimming golds in Munich by announcing a return for Barcelona 20 years later, only to miss the qualifying time for the United States trials. So far, it also neatly encapsulates Gareth Bale’s second coming at Tottenham.
The highlights of Bale’s first chapter in north London are safe for posterity, from his 30-yard Exocet to sink West Ham to those “taxi for Maicon” chants when, with one electrifying display against Inter Milan, he all but ended the career of a right-back capped 76 times for Brazil.
The sequel, alas, is following a law of ever-diminishing returns. In the past week, a four-time Champions League winner has started on the bench against eighth-tier Marine and been an unused substitute in a draw with Fulham that, in happier times, would have cried out for his intervention.
Four months in, it is apt to ask what purpose Bale’s (right) Tottenham restoration, even if only on loan, is serving. It appears not to work for Jose Mourinho, who places greater trust in Carlos Vinicius, an imposing but limited centre-forward, than he does in a talent who transferred to the Bernabeu for £89 million.
It is not paying off for chairman Daniel Levy, who drove the Bale deal and invested heavily in the narrative of the prodigal son’s homecoming, but whose faith has been rewarded with just one goal and four league appearances since September. And it is, self-evidently, suboptimal for Bale, who had hoped to escape his crueller Spanish caricatures but who instead finds himself back in familiar casting as an overpaid blanket stand.
This was not how Bale’s encore was supposed to unfold, with an FA Cup cameo in Crosby and 32 minutes in a Europa
League defeat to Royal Antwerp.
His Tottenham comeback was sold as a richly symbolic affair, a chance for him to cast off his humiliating exile in Madrid and become a crucial contributor to his old club’s challenge for a first league title in 60 years.
That path, sadly, has never looked more remote. Bale is football’s answer to an expensive coffee-table book, a reassuring presence but one rarely dusted off for any meaningful use.
The battlefield of the Bale debate is, as ever, tribal. In Wales, he occupies a venerated position, not far below that of John Charles or Gareth Edwards, where any suggestion of his declining abilities is deemed heretical.
In Madrid, by contrast, he will be forever resented by some Real supporters for failing to master their language, acting as if his nine-iron mattered
more to him than his No 9 jersey and finally aggravating the wound by posing behind a banner that read: “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order.”
But it is reasonable both to cherish the memories of Bale at his greatest, from terrorising Marc Bartra in a length-of-the-field dash to win the Copa del Rey to producing the bicycle-kick in Kiev that sealed Real’s 13th European Cup triumph, and to despair at what has happened to him since.
Somewhere behind that impassive facade, there are some wondrous flourishes waiting to be unleashed.
Bale, for all his share of injuries, is not one whose body has failed him yet. He is only 31, a year younger than Robert Lewandowski, who has just been voted the best player in the world. If he were not match-fit, then he would not be named among the Tottenham substitutes. His is a malaise defying easy explanation, and which grows all the more maddening as a consequence.
One theory is that Mourinho is simply at a loss to know what to do with Bale. His main targets in this month’s transfer market are a centre-back and a box-to-box midfielder. But for now, he must work out how best to deploy a luxury loan signing whose most memorable act of the past 12 months was to perform a cryptic binoculars gesture with a roll of medical tape in the empty stands at Granada.
This is where matters are complicated. Usually, those players for whom Mourinho does not care, he crushes.
It is not always a sign of shrewd judgment, given how he disposed of Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah at Chelsea. This time, he does not have the luxury of kicking Bale to the kerb.
Tottenham, in all likelihood, represents Mourinho’s last chance in the Premier League, his disregard of Bale may be interpreted as questioning Levy’s judgment.
When you think about it, it is not dissimilar to the situation at Real, where Bale had the protection of Florentino Perez but not the backing of Zinedine Zidane, leading to a wretched impasse that benefited nobody. Bale is not blameless in the downward trajectory his career has taken, but he has the knack of ending up as the man in the middle at his clubs, the pawn in a much wider power-play. Does he have the raging desire to go again?
Only he can answer. With this brilliant but mercurial player, the one certainty is that a potentially glorious sunset is giving way to the longest night. (© Daily Telegraph, London)