‘Bale took wing …and that did me a big favour’
TWO years ago Neil Taylor scored in his last game for Wrexham in front of a crowd of 298. At the same time Gareth Bale was scoring winners against Arsenal and Chelsea that grabbed the attention of the whole of Europe.
Tomorrow, Wales team-mates Taylor and Bale will share the same White Hart Lane pitch after taking very different routes to get there.
Swansea left-back Taylor, 23, has known Bale since the pair represented Wales at Under-17 level, but for a long time the Tottenham midfielder was in a different league – literally and metaphorically.
When Bale joined Spurs from Southampton as a 17-year-old in a deal worth £10 million, Taylor earned his first £150-a-week professional contract at Wrexham after being released by Manchester City as a youngster.
He could not afford to move out of the family home and was sharing a battered old Fiat Tipo with his brother and sister. Then, in 2008, he became a non-league footballer when Wrexham were relegated to the Conference.
Had it not been for Bale’s conversion from left-back to left winger, Taylor admits his rapid rise up the domestic and international ladder with Swansea and Wales could have been curtailed.
“I’ve taken a different path to other people and, if you’d offered me the chance to be in Tottenham’s youth team and be a professional there, I would have taken it,” said Taylor. “But looking back, it has probably done me good.
“I got 100 games under my belt before I was even 21 with Wrexham, so it was really good to get out and play football and play with men. Not a lot of players, even at big clubs, get to do that at such an early age.
“The Conference is not where any sort of footballer wants to play. The pitches are hard, the changing rooms are hard and the styles of football are hard to play against.
“You’re in a league where the players’ stature is more important than their ability. You have to be able to compete and it certainly toughens you up. You hope and you work as hard as you can to get out, but you need that little bit of luck. I was lucky I was still involved in the Wales set-up.
“When I joined up for those Wales camps, I was playing with guys who were at Premier League clubs. It gives you a good opportunity to play on the same level and you get a lot of scouts at the games. That benefited me.
“I’ve known Gareth since we were in the Under-17s, but he excelled and went straight through to the senior team by 18 or 19. Southampton gave him his chance, it paid off and he got his move to Spurs. In many ways it did me a big favour that they converted Gareth into a winger, otherwise the Welsh left-back spot would have been taken for a long time.”
Taylor was recommended to Swansea by first-team coach Alan Curtis, who is part of Brian Flynn’s Wales Under-21 set-up and he has not looked back.
His first season ended in promotion to the Premier League and Taylor is now part of a Swansea team who sit comfortably in mid-table, having beaten Manchester City and Arsenal and whose style of play has been likened to Barcelona.
“At the start of the season, people were saying, ‘You’re like Blackpool’,” said Taylor. “Now it’s Barcelona!
“We smile when people call us Swansealona, but we work every day to play this sort of football. We played like this in the Championship, but we didn’t get the recognition because it’s not the Premier League. But when we turn over teams like Manchester City, people sit up and watch.
“Barcelona have been the best team in Europe for the last five or six years. Their style of football is not very well known in this country, so people see us as a breath of fresh air to be trying it in the Premier League.
“We talk about Barcelona in training and, though we are miles away from them, they are a club we aspire to be like. It’s not just on the pitch, not just the youngsters they bring through, it’s the whole club model.”
Taylor and Swansea know better than most the importance of having a dream.
Taylor interview courtesy of New Era Global Sports Management.