The Welshman is already a billionaire, so why settle for sitting on the bench just to prove a point to his employers at the Santiago Bernabéu?
The celebrations for the Real Madrid League title on Thursday night were difficult to watch.
Not because the Zinedine Zidane were unworthy winners; They had done more than enough in the course of the 2019-20 campaign to show that they were superior to Barcelona in second place.
No, it was just the sight of Gareth Bale awkwardly trying to share the joy of his teammates as they huddled around the trophy that made the images of Valdebebas so terrible.
The Welshman positioned himself, forcefully, just outside the group. His punches were half-hearted at best; his forced smile.
He knew he had not participated in the first Madrid title win since 2017.
Back then, his participation had been hampered by a succession of injuries. Even then, he scored nine goals in 27 appearances.
This time, however, Bale was simply over-requisite.
Even with injuries to Marco Asensio and Eden Hazard, Bale saw just nine minutes of play in two first-team appearances between March and July.
🏆 😍 TEAM GO! 34 # 34Ligas | #RealFootball pic.twitter.com/aHx2eMiVum
– Real Madrid CF 🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@realmadriden) July 16, 2020
He spent 10 of the last 12 Madrid games of the League season sitting on the bench.
He got bored so much that he started having fun, first pretending to be asleep during the 2-0 victory over Alaves last week, before pretending to hold a pair of binoculars during Monday night’s victory in Granada.
Such childish antics fell like a lead balloon in Madrid.
Even Dimitar Berbatov, an infamously lethargic character who was on the bench for some great games during his time at Manchester United, was surprised by Bale’s demeanor.
“He is not professional and disrespectful towards Real Madrid,” the retired striker wrote in his column about Betfair earlier this week.
“I feel his pain. I’ve been in his place of not playing and probably nobody is giving him any answer. So, you feel provoked to do that kind of thing.”
“But I can’t support what he did. If I was a Real Madrid fan and saw a player disrespect the team like that, it would be too much.”
“It was a show of power. It was if he was saying, ‘Play with me or I’ll do whatever I want.’ That doesn’t sit well with me.
“The only solution is for Bale to leave Real Madrid.”
However, there seems to be little chance of that happening now.
Madrid would clearly love to take Bale out of his books, given that he still has two years to fulfill a contract that gives him 15 million euros (£ 13.7 million / $ 17.2 million) per year.
Since the momentum that Zidane returned as a coach, there has been constant talk of a return to England, but it has no foundation.
Even Bale’s agent Jonathan Barnett has publicly stated that his client has little interest in joining a Premier League club at the moment.
He will only join a club that can at least match his current salary, which is precisely why he was scheduled to move to China last summer.
When that agreement fell apart, so did Bale’s relationship with Madrid.
Of course, he never had a good relationship with Zidane, even during the Frenchman’s first term in office.
Zidane has said there was “nothing personal” about his willingness to discharge Bale at the start of the season, while Barnett has struggled to point out that the coach “has never said anything bad” about the winger.
There is no great animosity; the pair simply does not connect.
Florentino Pérez, by contrast, always had affection for Bale, whom he made the most expensive player in the world in 2013.
But when the royal president rehired Zidane, he did so knowing that this meant the end of the road for Bale.
The 31-year-old would have been allowed to leave if a Chinese Super League club had been willing to pay a nominal transfer fee for the striker.
However, the deal was also ruined by a serious knee injury to Asensio. Since Hazard also had fitness issues at the time, Perez didn’t feel like he could further narrow down Real’s attack options by unloading Bale.
Bale handled the disappointment impeccably. The Spanish press has long unfairly reprimanded him for his supposedly poor command of the language, his love of golf and the perception of distance.
However, he praised his professionalism and performances during the opening rounds of the 2019-20 campaign.
However, the situation deteriorated rapidly during the winter. Bale’s representatives continued to hope to resurrect a movement away from the Bernabéu, but the club no longer had any of that.
In his first show of petulance, Bale was photographed celebrating his country’s qualification for Euro 2020 last November with a flag saying: “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order.”
He and his compatriots found it amusing. But no one at the Bernabéu saw the fun side.
Apparently, there was still no problem between Bale and Zidane, who continued to publicly declare that the squad was fully united. However, Bale has started just six games for Real since the flag was first raised.
No wonder, then, that he could barely force himself to celebrate the 34th Madrid title.
It has been claimed that Bale no longer wants to play soccer; which is only motivated by cash.
However, he clearly still cares about Wales, but not Madrid. If no other club agrees to meet your salary demands, you are more than happy to stay at the Bernabéu for another two years. The attitude is that if Madrid does not want to play with him, that is his problem.
Not a sad situation, of course, particularly in today’s economic climate: Bale is a Champions League winner billionaire.
As Barnett said last month: “He has a very pleasant lifestyle, so I don’t see why he probably wouldn’t see his career in Madrid.”
“Financially, he will want enough for the rest of his life, and his children and grandchildren. He has won almost everything in the world except the World Cup.”
“Go back and play [in the Premier League] It would be a great thing, but I don’t think he wants to do it right now, as he is very happy to play for Real Madrid.
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“It is his life.”
However, these are also his few remaining years as a professional. And he’s wasting them, wasting Real’s money.
Only Bale will know if that seems like a price worth paying.
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