Gareth Bale Retires: A Lifetime Wales and Golf – Sport

Gareth Bale presented his last solo run to the world in double form. At the beginning of the week, he published two statements with similar content via the usual online channels: one for the general public and one for his native Wales. “To my Welsh family,” read the opening words of a slightly kitschy farewell letter, “the decision to end football is by far the hardest decision of my career.”

Over. Gareth Bale, 33, is retiring after 111 caps, both in club football and in the national team – he will of course always remain linked to the red dragons from the hill country of western Britain, he assured. His teammates started with him as “boys” back then, today they are like “brothers”. And even if one looks at Bale’s 17 years as a professional with less pathos, a remarkable career ends there with one last flourish.

One with title wins and goals that others don’t even dare to dream of, on the one hand. Bale is part of the post-galactic generation that managed the unprecedented feat of winning the Champions League five times at Real Madrid (plus three league titles, four Club World Cups and one Copa del Rey). After moving to Madrid in 2013 as the first 100 million man in world football, he scored 106 goals there. And what kind, above all: what decisive ones.

Gareth Bale scored important goals in Madrid – many and beautiful ones

Certainly deserves a special place in the Louvre of the legendary gates his overhead kick in the 2018 Champions League final against Liverpool, a work full of folly, with which he scored the 2-1 (he later scored the 3-1). also be unforgettable Supersonic sprint against Barça in the 2014 cup final, which upset poor defender Marc Bartra. Or be breathy one-touch against Dortmund 2017. or his appearance as semi-final fright Guardiolawith his most painful bankruptcy as a Bayern coach in 2014 (0: 4).

Because of these merits, they now tied a farewell garland for him at Real: “Bale was part of our team in one of the most successful phases of our history and will always stand for many of the most brilliant moments of the last decade.” The list of his great deeds could be continued and should of course also include his early days as a constant racer and force of nature at Tottenham Hotspur.

A glory of one goal: Gareth Bale scores an overhead kick to make it 2-1 against Liverpool in the 2018 Champions League final.

(Photo: David Ramos/Getty)

Just like his work as a solo entertainer with the Welsh. Bale led his home country to fourth place in the 2016 European Championship – alongside second and third division professionals. If anyone has scored for Wales it’s 40-time goalscorer Bale, for whom the term ‘folk hero’ is an understatement. He recently became the first Welshman in 64 years to score a ball at a World Cup, from the penalty spot against the USA.

Speaking of which: the fact that Bale himself was champion with Los Angeles FC at his last stop in the MLS operetta league last October was hardly noticed, but it underscores the impression that wherever he was, there were titles. But sometimes also unflattering ones like that of Europe’s most prominent “zero buck kicker” – and that’s the downside of this decorated, but somehow tainted career. Because it could actually have been more for Bale if he hadn’t gone on a strange permanent strike at some point.

In his late phase in Madrid, he shared a relationship of mutual ignorance with Real coach Zinedine Zidane. the strict one mister Didn’t think much of Bale, the prestige transfer from President Florentino Pérez, who he viewed just as critically. Zidane let Bale go sour between the bench and the stands for years, after which the once celebrated member of the successful band “BBC” (Benzema, Bale, Cristiano Ronaldo) preferred to sit out his contract on the world’s golf courses. The indignation was huge at someone who cashed in and simply threw away his talent, who pretended to be asleep in the box – or at an international match with colleagues held up a flag that said: “Wales. Golf. Madrid – in that order.”

Bale just had his priorities, which he ultimately articulated without hesitation. Before he said goodbye to sporting insignificance in the direction of the USA (and the golf clubs in Orange County), he explained in the podcast The Hat-Trick in 2020: “I think that more and more players want to move to America. That also applies to me, after all I am I like going to Los Angeles on vacation.” He has plenty of that now.

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