Taxi for Bale! Like Jose his best days have gone and they are a marriage made in hell
THE s econd coming of Gareth Bale was not meant to be like this. He was supposed to be the final piece in a glorious attacking trident at Spurs who would light up the Premier League and take us all back a decade to when he terrorised Inter Milan and became the best player in England. This was supposed to be a triumphant homecoming after he had conquered the world with Real Madrid.
Except it hasn’t turned out like that. The exuberant cry of ‘Taxi for Maicon’ summed up the Welshman’s brilliance once but it is a distant memory. ‘ Taxi for Bale’ seems more appropriate, sadly. A taxi all t he way back t o Madrid. The Spanish gi a nt s were c a s t a s ungrateful wretches for t heir classless treatment of him but it is hard t o argue now t hat t heir judgment was wrong.
Bale is one of the greatest players these islands have ever produced, certainly one of the most decorated in terms of the Champions League medals he has won and nothing will change that but there is sadness about seeing him sitting in the stands at Spurs, adrift in Jose Mourinho’s wide sea of joylessness, wearing t hat faintly bemused expression t h a t h a s b e c o me familiar since he fell from grace at Madrid.
It has got to the point where Bale only plays either when Spurs are desperate or the opposition is not really up to much. He was intended as a luxury item but Mourinho doesn’t do luxury items so he has shoved him to the back of the shelf with the remaindered goods. We may not be far from the moment where Bale stands on the pitch after an international with grinning team-mates and a sign that says: ‘Wales, Golf, Spurs: in that order.’
BALE’S your go-to-guy for Ludogorets and LASK Linz and he’s good for a half-hour against Marine in the FA Cup but when t h e b i g g a mes c o me around he tends to spend most of the time as a spectator. Mourinho threw him in against Brighton last week when Harry Kane was out with injury and it didn’t work. Bale lasted an hour in a poor team p e r f o r ma n c e . T h e n h e wa s substituted.
Maybe he’ll get a chance against West Brom this lunchtime. West Brom might fit the profile of teams Bale is trusted to play against: struggling near the bottom of the table with a defence that has shipped 52 goals, more than anyone in the top four divisions. This one’s got Bale’s name written all over it.
It would be lovely if he played and even better if he excelled and better still if there were Spurs fans there to see it. Saying you saw Gareth Bale play sti l l means something. But it does not seem as if he has the hunger any more, not the hunger he once had anyway. Not everyone has the inner drive and i nsati able work et hi c of Cristiano Ronaldo. Bale i s 31. Perhaps he is just too balanced a human being to want to sacrifice his life for football any longer.
Some are starting to train their sights on Bale and question his commitment but he made it plain some time ago that he favoured a move from the Bernabeu to China and it was obvious then which way he saw his career heading. China offered big money and a lower standard where he could still excel. He didn’t try to hide that.
It’s not Mourinho’s fault, either. He does not favour an expansive style that might provide a better platform for a player of Bale’s waning talents but it is not as if that has come as a surprise to anyone. Whatever you think of his style, Mourinho picks players on their merits. If he thinks a player is going to help him get results, he plays him. He calls the shots. Bale doesn’t fit the profile.
The longer the season goes on and the longer Bale is marginalised, the more it looks as if his arrival was a public relations stunt gone wrong. It feels like a misguided sop to a fanbase uneasy about the departure of Mauricio Pochettino and worried that Mourinho was a manager past his sell-by date.
Bale was a sticking plaster to cover a gaping wound. A triumph for image over reality. Mourinho’s best days have gone and so have Bale’s. Together, it is hard to argue that they have been anything other than a marriage made in hell.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect is that Bale’s move was sanctioned by Spurs’ chairman Daniel Levy, the king of the deal, a man admired throughout the game for his ability to sniff out a bargain in the transfer market and for his clever husbandry of Tottenham.
By his standards, the loan signing of Bale has been an expensive and humiliating bust. Upwards of £10 million in wages for a bloke to sit on the bench most of the season doesn’t seem like much of a bargain to me. Now, things have switched and Bale’s presence has become a source of rancour rather than a force for unity.
When TV presenter and reporter Alison Bender asked Mourinho after the defeat by Chelsea why Bale had been an unused substitute, M our in ho switched to the unpleasant, personal, demeaning attack mode he favours when things are going wrong.
‘Good question, he snapped, ‘but you don’t deserve an answer.’ Stay classy, Jose.
The irony is that Bale was signed as the vehicle Mourinho could use in his journey back to relevance. At a club that prizes attractive football, Bale was to be the camouflage for his manager’s outmoded philosophy. Instead, two greats of the game are racing each other to its exit door.