It took 25 attempts for Gareth Bale to be on the winning side for Spurs, now he is the most exhilarating left-back around
Plenty of theories attempt to explain how Gareth Bale has exploded from the shadows since the turn of the year to establish himself as one of the Premier League’s most exhilarating players. The most amusing, on the face of it, has come from Harry Redknapp.
The joke goes that the Tottenham Hotspur manager wanted to give Bale the hairdryer – only he was worried that the Welshman would use it for himself. “I just said, ‘C’mon Gareth, stop messing about with your hair’,” Redknapp said. “He was always at it.”
Bale laughs a slightly nervous laugh. It turns out Redknapp was not making an off-the-cuff remark. “I remember, we had a meeting about that,” Bale says. “It was something that probably needed to be said to me. It was said and, in a way, it helped me.
“The gaffer had just come in and at the time we were at the bottom of the league. I think he just wanted to give everyone a kick up the arse. And he did. He’s straightforward, he tells you what’s what and I think that’s good for any player. You need to take the criticism on board.”
Contrary to stereotype, Redknapp brings a meticulous approach to his man-management and the wider point he wished to impart was that Bale needed to toughen up. It is a message he continued to stress to him last year. Redknapp is on record as saying he felt the left-sided player would limp off in training “if he got a little mark on him”.
“I don’t really remember too much of that, to be honest,” Bale says. “I definitely needed to toughen up but that just comes with growing up. I’m still quite young. In the last couple of years, I have grown up a lot and just taken on board what’s needed to be taken on board. And I’ve realised the demands of the Premier League in physical terms.”
In mental terms, Bale has needed to show depths of resolve, focus and patience. In the summer of last year, he had knee surgery that wrecked his pre-season and forced him to miss the first six weeks of the league.
It was not his first serious injury at Tottenham. In December 2007, after a bright start for the club in which he scored three times in his first five games, including a belter against Arsenal, he damaged the ligaments in his right ankle. He required two operations and the insertion of a metal pin, which has since been removed. He did not play for eight months. It is no exaggeration to say the complications threatened his career.
Bale played his first game of last season in the Carling Cup victory at Preston North End on 23 September but, by the end of December, he had made only five substitute appearances in the Premier League and no starts. His third season at the club, after his £5m transfer from Southampton, appeared to be covering familiar rocky territory.
Yet Bale’s single-mindedness has never been in doubt. He says it comes from his parents, Frank and Debbie, who “always taught me to do the right thing”. He knew the in-form left-back Benoît Assou-Ekotto would be absent on Africa Cup of Nations duty with Cameroon in January and that he might have the chance of a short run in the team. He vowed to ensure it became an extended one.
Bale bottled up his frustrations throughout October, November and December, quietly telling himself the breakthrough would come. When it did, owing to a hip injury to Assou-Ekotto rather than the scheduled international call-up, Bale made good on his promise. Since the FA Cup win over Peterborough United on 2 January, he has been ever-present in Redknapp’s starting line-up and his performances have got better and better.
“The highlights for me were scoring the winning goals against Arsenal and Chelsea,” Bale said of his decisive contributions to the back-to-back home victories in April that ignited the club’s push for a fourth-placed finish. But it is impossible to overlook the night at Manchester City when a 1-0 win secured entry to the Champions League play-off round.
“Everyone was just on a high afterwards,” Bale says. “We were buzzing that we had a chance to qualify for the Champions League. We had a little bit of a celebration in the changing room and you obviously saw on TV that we threw stuff over the gaffer.”
Whose idea was that?
“I can’t name names.”
David Bentley?
“Probably.”
Bale has started this season as he finished the last, with his power, pace and wickedly varied deliveries to the fore. He was outstanding in the opening day draw against Manchester City and, after getting both of the goals in the 2-1 victory at Stoke City last Saturday – the second he described as “probably the best goal I’ve scored”– he created all four in the Champions League play-off second-leg win over Young Boys of Bern, which has catapulted Tottenham into the big time. The group stage draw of Europe’s elite competition has pitted them against Internazionale, the holders, Werder Bremen and FC Twente.
“We are all looking forward to playing against these big teams and testing ourselves,” Bale says. “It’s a very exciting time. But there’s no reason why we can’t progress into the knockout round. We’ve got good players and a good manager, and the home crowd get behind us 100%. White Hart Lane has become a little fortress for us. We’re not in the competition just to make up the numbers. We want to make a mark on it.”
It is incredible to think that less than a year ago Bale was considered in some quarters to be a jinx. In his first 24 Premier League appearances for Tottenham, he had failed to taste victory. Redknapp was so keen to chase the monkey from Bale’s back that, with the team 4-0 up at home to Burnley on 26 September, he introduced him as an 85th-minute substitute. Tottenham ran out 5-0 winners.
“It was a bit annoying that people went on about that statistic but it didn’t affect me at all,” Bale says. “It was just one of those things that freakily happened. I knew as soon as I got my chance to play we’d win a few games and it’d be done.”
Bale’s tender years were frequently ignored as the critics passed judgment on his travails. He celebrated his 21st birthday last month, as ever without alcohol, being teetotal. There is a parallel with his former Southampton Academy room-mate and close friend Theo Walcott, who made the move to north London as a callow teenager and has played out his growing pains under a very public spotlight.
“I watched Match of the Day last Saturday,” Bale says, “because I knew Theo had scored a hat-trick for Arsenal against Blackpool. I was watching it for his goals, not my own [against Stoke] and I was a bit surprised when Alan Hansen was critical of him because Theo couldn’t really do much more than score a hat-trick. People do forget how young we are and they do expect a lot of us. But we know how to take that.”
Bale’s thoughts turn briefly to the international stage, where his Wales team will face England in Euro 2012 qualifying, raising the prospect of him going head-to-head with Walcott. “They are obviously massive favourites to beat us. We’ll go in with no pressure and we’ll just give it our all. You never know. We could cause a little upset.”
But the discussion soon returns to his own determination to succeed, as Bale is taken back to New Year’s Eve and a quiet night at home in London playing Fifa 2010 with his friend. “I had the Peterborough game around the corner so it was just me and him playing and chilling,” he says. “It was nothing special, unlike most people in the world. I’ve had to make sacrifices. You are looked at by a lot of people so you have to keep a good image. But sometimes resting is better than going out and doing stuff.”
Bale had one simple resolution and he knew that it would make his professional life click. “It was just to play. It was frustrating being injured and not playing; any footballer will tell you that. It was just about being injury free and getting a run in the team. [I thought] if I keep playing then I will start performing and my confidence will go up.
“This has been the first time you’ve really seen me as a player, playing all of the time. It’s being able to show what I can do. I was given my chance and I’d like to say I took it.”
To his long list of qualities, Bale can add the art of understatement.
Gareth Bale is wearing the Adidas F50 adiZero football – the same super-fast and super-light boot worn by Lionel Messi and David Villa. Get yours at www.prodirectsoccer.com
Tottenham HotspurDavid Hytnerguardian.co.uk
