The Gareth Bale – Real Madrid conundrum: What next?

In the Champions League round-of-16 fixture, Real Madrid faced Manchester City at Etihad.

Zinedine Zidane has never been defeated in his Champions League knockouts managerial career until he faced Pep Guardiola. The masterclass of Guardiola and the horrendous errors of Raphael Varane resulted in Real Madrid’s defeat. To aggravate their loss, Gareth Bale‘s absence hurt Los Blancos a lot.

When the 24-men traveling squad was released, Gareth Bale was left absent from the squad. When asked about the Welshman’s absence, the legendary Frenchman said that Bale didn’t want to play against the English club. This raises a big question among the Madrid faithful and the football pundits. What next for Gareth Bale? What is going in the player’s mind? Where is the issue heading towards?

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At the Spanish capital, the Welshman earns £350,000-per-week and is the second-highest-paid player of Real Madrid. The player pockets close to £15 million for a year and is contracted till 2022. In the due process, the club has to pay €60 million to the player if they are unable to find a buyer. Zinedine Zidane has made it clear that he will not field Gareth Bale once again and Bale’s agent states that the player is happy at Madrid.

The former Tottenham player moved to the Spanish capital for an astonishing fee of €101 million in 2013 despite Manchester United showing a strong interest in the winger. Since his move to the Santiago Bernabeu, the right-winger has 122 G/A in 171 games in seven seasons.

Keeping the 2019/20 season aside, Gareth Bale has been instrumental in Real Madrid’s two La-Liga triumphs and three Champions League victories. It is the same Welshman whose brace decimated and stopped Liverpool in 2017/18 from clinching the Champions League, under Zinedine Zidane.

However, the situation started to worsen soon after the final whistle of the 2017/18 UEFA CL finals. The player said he is considering a move away from the Bernabeu which irked the Real Madrid faithful and Zidane. During this frantic period, Zidane and Ronaldo’s sudden move away from the Spanish capital helped Bale extend his stay in Spain.

With Zinedine Zidane’s re-appointment in March, 2019 questions started over Bale’s future. Despite the club wanting to move away from the fringe player, they couldn’t. In the 2019/20 campaign, Bale has just 16 appearances in which he has disappointed the club largely. He has as few as 4 G/A in 16 La-Liga appearances. Stoking up Wales – Golf – Madrid controversy didn’t help either.

The major stumbling block in Gareth Bale’s transfer is his massive wages. Though the player still has something left in him, no club is ready to shell up a huge transfer fee alongside the massive wages. The undefeatable player on his day has been linked with multiple clubs like Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur in the past but neither of them are interested currently.

Moreover, Florentino Perez blocked Bale’s move to China on the 11th hour in the summer transfer window. The deal was worth £1 million-per-week and Bale had almost packed his bags. The club didn’t allow the player to move and the Wales international has now decided to see out his contract at Bernabeu.

To sum up, Gareth Bale and Real Madrid have locked horns and no one is ready to budge. The same is happening between Mesut Ozil and Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal. The issues won’t affect the players as they are contracted to the club and they receive their weekly wages.

This affects the club’s finance and the non-playing/managing staff as in the situation of Arsenal. It would be better for Bale and Florentino Perez to resolve the deadlock and move ahead after parting ways.