Decoding the reasons behind Gareth Bale's struggles at Real Madrid this season

Gareth Bale has had a sub-par second season at Real Madrid

What a difference a year can make. By the end of last season, Gareth Bale was being lauded as the man to carry Real Madrid forward along with Cristiano Ronaldo. Despite not having a pre-season with the team, he proved to be an extremely good signing for the Blancos and scored winning goals in both the Champions League and Copa del Rey finals.

He had answered skeptics who thought that the massive price tag would burden him a lot and that he wouldn’t be able to live up to it. But he shut them all up with his performances.

After a good first season, expectations further increased, especially because he had a pre-season this time around and was actually the best Los Blancos player in those games.

Now, however, there is actually a chance of him leaving the club after an awful season that was made worse by the jeering of some of the fans at the Bernabeu. So what went wrong for the Welshman in his second season?

---

Too much muscle weight added

Has Gareth Bale putting on muscle actually hindered his game?

Gareth Bale has never hidden his admiration for Cristiano Ronaldo. From his days at Tottenham Hotspur, he has displayed his awe for the Portuguese international and has tried to model his game on the current Ballon d’Or holder.

This was one of the reasons why Florentino Perez wanted him so much – to have another Ronaldo-type player on the right-wing. And that obsession has become the reason for his current downfall.

Gareth Bale’s most deadly weapon is his acceleration and speed. His lightweight upper-body meant that he could, with agility, move past defenders, leaving them behind with his tremendous pace. However, by the beginning of this season, we saw an entirely different Bale.

He had gained so much muscle weight that one wouldn’t be wrong to think that the only time the former Southampton youngster wasn’t in the gym was when he was eating, sleeping or answering the calls of nature.

With the increase in his upper-body weight, his main assets – pace and acceleration – took a severe hit and he could no longer outrun defenders like he once was able to.

It is not that too much muscle is bad. In fact, it is great for someone who almost always operates inside the box and has to hassle defenders, hold them off, and finish strongly – something which Cristiano Ronaldo does and hence his bulk physique is necessary. However, with Bale, that is not the case as he is being…

---

Suffocated on the right-wing

Gareth Bale made his name while playing on the left-wing. He ripped numerous defenders from there – Maicon, for one – and that is his best position. In his last season with Spurs, Andre-Villas Boas started playing him more centrally and that worked too because he could always outrun defenders by moving the ball past them with his left foot.

But he was rarely – only on some occasions – played on the right and never looked as effective.

Bale is not a Messi or Robben type of dribbler – someone who keeps the ball really close to his boots while dribbling. He is more like the classic-winger who uses his pace to help run at defenders, by knocking the ball into space and running at it with full speed.

This type of dribbling can only work when there is space to knock the ball into – which he doesn’t get when he is on the right. And when he does, it is either in the middle or towards the right corner.

In both cases, the space isn’t worth it because if knocked into the middle, someone else reaches the ball before him (note the drop in pace) and if knocked in towards the corner flag, Bale only has one option and that is to cross with his weaker right foot.

One could argue that Bale did not have a good season with Madrid playing on the right, but there are two reasons for that. One, defenders have had a season to learn from his movement and now know what he does and likes to do while the second reason is..

Luka Modric’s injury-enforced absence

Modric’s absence has hurt Gareth Bale’s form badly

Gareth Bale’s agent claimed the other day that his client isn’t passed enough and that has hurt his form. To an extent, he is right. The Croat Modric is the Real Madrid player blessed with great vision and it is his incisive passing that helped Real break open stubborn defenses and enabled Gareth Bale to have a good season.

The two were Spurs’ star men during their time together there and wreaked havoc as a pair. Modric’s passing and Bale’s speed and directness complemented each other more than nachos and melted cheese and the former’s elegant passes were almost always seized upon by the Welshman.

Real Madrid’s 22-game winning run saw Gareth Bale being really effective for at least two-thirds of that period. But the last 4-6 games of the winning run were less than impressive.

Follow a pattern here? When Luka Modric was playing, Bale was at his best and the BBC was full-functional. But after Modric got injured and Isco came in to fill for him, the right-side of the famous trident became sluggish.

Both these men possess telepathic understanding. The little Croatian knows beforehand where Bale will run and the latter knows a single frame earlier as to where the former’s pass will arrive. After Modric got injured, Bale lost the guy who could read him and his movements the best and that hurt his form.

---

Boos from the crowd a confidence killer

Boos from the crowd have not helped Bale’s cause

And finally, the confidence-hampering jeers from the people who they call his own. Fans at the Bernabeu are known to be among the toughest to please. Time and time again, they have shown their ruthlessness when it comes to criticizing their own players.

Someone like Zidane – and now Casillas – has had to endure the poison spewn by them and Gareth Bale is no exception.

It doesn’t matter that he was bought for €100 million. It doesn’t matter that he scored the winning goal in both the Copa del Rey and the Champions League. The only thing that matters is that he is not playing too good and they are allowed to boo him for that because they have paid for the tickets of the match.

This treatment from the fans has left the Welshman in a state of delirium. He was never treated like this by his own fans at either Spurs or Southampton, but now he has been subjected to very severe criticism – and that too after becoming a star.

This has hampered his confidence to a huge level and sometimes it feels like he is too scared to get a touch of the ball because he knows that he will be booed the moment he receives it.

The curtains are almost down. Bale has had a poor season, so have Madrid. The only possibilities from here on are that he either stays and proves himself or goes to another club, away from the ungrateful bunch of fans that boo him week-in and week-out.