BALE TALKS TOTTENHAM In an interview with The Telegraph, Gareth Bale has spoken of his time at Tottenham. I talk about moving to Madrid as hard, he says, but joining Spurs was the hardest. Id gone from being a 16-year-old at Southampton to moving to Tottenham and playing with the likes of [Dimitar] Berbatov and Robbie [Keane] at a completely different level. And I literally didn’t know anybody at Spurs. Harry Redknapp gave me a real kick up the arse when he arrived, he says. He was the one who started the ball rolling. If I didn’t get that kick I wouldn’t be where I am now. It happens with young players, but I needed that kick He admits that a meeting with Tottenhams new coach in the summer of 2012 was a changing point in his career. I said at the beginning of that 2012/2013 season that I felt I could go up a level and was frustrated by being double-marked every game on the left-wing. André Villas-Boas had just joined and we had this big chat. We decided to give me that free role where I was able to wander and find space. That was it, then. As soon as we did it, I started playing better and scoring more goals, the team began winning more games and it had a snowball effect. My confidence was sky- high. He speaks very fondly of the former Tottenham manager. The confidence he showed in me was unbelievable, he says. He instilled me with a belief that I can go on to the pitch and control a game. If we were struggling, I suddenly believed that I could go and take over. I’ll always be very grateful to him. He admits that if it were not for Real Madrid, he would have found it very hard to ever leave Spurs. If it wasn’t Real Madrid, it would have been very, very difficult to ever leave, he says. I hope the fans have forgiven me now. It was incredible to see all the messages of support from Tottenham fans after the Champions League final. So many people said how proud they were of me, and that felt amazing. I loved my time at Tottenham and the fans were always incredible to me. I think they understood that the opportunity to join Real Madrid was a once-in-a lifetime chance and at the time I was playing well and I wanted to test myself. Without Real Madrid, I would have loved to still be there playing for Spurs. But winning the Champions League shows exactly why I wanted to make the move. On being asked if there were still any partisan loyalites now that he views the Premier League as an outsider, he replies, dead-pan serious, Of course there are. I still want Arsenal to lose and Spurs to win.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 14:48:49 +0000
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