Gareth Bale has been heralded many times in the past for his great performances in a lot of games over the course of his career. The Welshman has in fact broken many records at his time in Madrid and one journalist, namely, Guillem Balague who is well known for his punditry and writing in England has written an interesting piece about British players who played abroad.
According to Guillem Balague, Gareth Bale is the greatest ever British player to have plied his trade abroad. In an article for Spanish paper, AS, Guillem notes all of England’s greatest players who played abroad in their time and says that Bale is by far the best. It is also difficult to argue with that statement because Bale has 2 Champions League trophies in 3 years at Madrid, a feat not many have achieved.
A scorer in both the finals, he is finally beginning to perform better than Cristiano Ronaldo week in and week out for Real Madrid and has really adapted to the Spanish game extremely well, in fact, one could argue that he is one of the best players in Spain although often overlooked.
Ballague compares Bale to David Beckham, Michael Owen, Paul Ince, Gary Lineker, Paul Gascoigne and so on. He says that Bale has in a short time eclipsed what any of those players achieved. Bale has scored in El Clasico multiple times and has scored various important goals for Madrid when they needed it.
Gareth Bale is on some good form this season as well and has scored 7 goals in 14 games in all competitions for Los Blancos. His latest was a brace for Real Madrid against Leganes and a superb volley against Legia Warsaw in the Champions League.
Also read : Spanish Watch for a round up of La Liga
The Welshman, according to Balague has settled to life in Madrid in an excellent way and is in for the long haul unlike many English players who just played for a few seasons abroad and he is thus reaping the benefits. Bale has certainly come a long way since his Tottenham days and has come full circle at Real Madrid. He has shown why Real paid that ridiculous amount of money for him by answering his critics in the best way possible – with goals.
Bale also boasts the best goal scoring record of any Englishman abroad. He has definitely got his critics but as long as he continues to play in such a fashion and continues to score goals – he will surely go down in Real Madrid history, if he has already not, for his contributions to Los Blanco’s Champion’s League victories.
Last season he only played 20 out of Real Madrid’s 52 games and yet scored 19 goals. Gareth Bale has also been able to show that he can match Cristiano Ronaldo for ability if he can just manage to stay fit for a full season.
He is by far one of the greatest British players abroad, as rightly pointed out by Guillem Balague.
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