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“Good session today,” Gareth Bale wrote on Instagram, accompanying the photograph of him from Tottenham training grounds on Tuesday with a bicep curl emoji. When the post went live that night, the Spurs team was at their hotel in Merseyside and looking forward to Wednesday’s FA Cup fifth-round tie at Everton. Except Bale wasn’t with them.
“Good session today?” José Mourinho thought. Bale had made it clear that he did not feel 100% and that he would not be able to travel, but the tone of his public message was different. Taken to the extreme, he was stopped to push Mourinho back into a corner at Goodison Park when Bale’s absence came to light.
What we have known for a long time about Mourinho is that he will fight his corner, seek to control the narrative, and very often land a few punches in the process. And so we had the interview after the Spurs’ wild 5-4 loss in which the manager provided awkward details to explain why Bale wasn’t a part of it.
Mourinho expressed surprise that after Bale was an unused substitute in Sunday’s 2-0 home win over West Brom, the player said he needed a scan of something irritating him, which took place on Monday. He was able to train on Tuesday, but Mourinho wanted to make it clear that Bale advised him that he felt he should work with the sports science team for the next few days. “I don’t think it is an obvious injury,” Mourinho said.
There have been few details about Bale’s problem, except to say that he is somewhere along a stage, and no one knows if he will be available for Saturday night’s match in Manchester City. But the impression Mourinho got was that he was at least baffled by Bale’s condition and, at worst, he wondered if he was really that bad. To work out the second point: Does Bale still want to break through walls for the Spurs?
Everything is incredibly delicate, the situation framed by the romance of Bale’s return to the club from Real Madrid on loan for a season, the yearning among the fan base for him to rewind the years to when he was the most dominant talent in the Premier League.
Mourinho is caught in the middle. He doesn’t want to attack Bale in his press conferences, he knows he shouldn’t do that, but it has become increasingly difficult for him to hide his frustration at the 31-year-old’s fitness level and performance.
Remember the joy Spurs fans felt when their idol returned to the club in mid-September? A group of them lined up at the entrance to the training ground as they drove it to finish it all, the sun was shining and they got carried away by the idea of Bale alongside Harry Kane and Son Heung-min in a lethal front of three.
Reality has been jarring and there is a reason Mourinho has barely played Bale in the games that count: He has looked fragile and single-paced, seemingly without confidence in his body. On bad days, it’s been like he’s worried about getting injured.
There has been a hint of new emperor clothes in all of this, it is difficult to accept that Bale has been stripped of his best finery, although Mourinho’s veiled excavations have become a bit more regular and with the veil sliding more and more.
Bale has been held back by a lack of football in recent seasons at Madrid, the last being the worst. When he rejoined the Spurs, he had played only four times since February 26. Bale needs confidence and regular action to find his rhythm; the more he plays, the stronger and more resistant he becomes. Clearly, that has not happened.
How much does all this annoy Bale, the man who has won everything at the club level, including four Champions League titles, and also has it all off the field: a loving family, magnificent homes and nearly £ 200 million? in the bank? As for Mourinho’s machinations, the answer is not one iota.
Bale endured much worse in Madrid, where almost everyone seemed to be against him. The club wanted him to leave, but they were afraid to let him join a rival so that he wouldn’t come back to haunt them. However, it made no sense when he was prevented from going to the Chinese Super League in the summer of 2019. The lines of conflict hardened, with Bale acting at times, he felt trapped. It was messy. At Spurs, meanwhile, he is a popular member of the locker room and fans will always love him.
Where does Bale go from here? He has one eye on the European Championship with Wales in June, although he couldn’t affect that in his current form. There is no option in his contract with Spurs for another year, so he will return to Madrid, where he is under contract until June 2022. It is unlikely that they will look for him there any more than he is now, but he would not be willing to continue. another loan.
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He is paid somewhere in excess of £ 650,000 per week under the terms of his contract with Madrid and if it is unclear exactly how much of that Spurs accepted, it is understood to be less than the £ 200,000 weekly that they pay Kane. your main source of income.
In the worst case scenario, Bale would collect what Madrid owes him for a final year, even if that meant more fighting and drift. It provides the sad postscript of a glorious career.
