Gareth Bale has done everything, won everything and outperformed every other British footballer – so why wasn’t that enough?

Gareth Bale created the best moment for a British footballer since 1966. Overhead kicks are a football fantasy and require at least three chases to be perfect. Considering the size of the deal, the size of the event, and the impact it had on the game as a whole, only Jeff Hurst’s hat-trick could eclipse him, and Bale still beat him by two points out of three.

Since Bale retired at the age of 33, we have to wonder why that goal in the 2018 Champions League final against Liverpool and everything that came before it never took him to the highest level in the mind of the British public. . Bale has done everything his race has ever been asked to: break youth; overcome early struggles; dominate England; test yourself abroad and succeed; win trophies; position yourself front and center at the most important moments; govern your country.

Can anyone else in the history of the British game say they made the same list? David Beckham has never won the European Cup outside of England. Kevin Keegan shone in Hamburg, winning the Ballon d’Or, but never scored for England in a major tournament. Wayne Rooney may have been the closest, but he didn’t leave England until his legs were hopeless. Bale excelled in everything.

Maybe we’re looking at all this the wrong way. If Bale’s career, with all its hallmarks of greatness, doesn’t seem like a worthy recognition of his talent, it’s just an unintended tribute to the talent itself. At Tottenham, a notoriously sluggish start gave way to a karmic reaction the like of which we’ve rarely seen. The English public was used to foreign imports and the defenders looked stupid. It was a diminutive winger in his early twenties from Cardiff who grabbed the world and threw it on his left foot.

Madrid is all the glory, but never the same comic book superhero, Billy the Wizard of Chaos and the genius of Bale. Has Bale become too sophisticated, too real? Or was he just out of sight and too often out of his mind? While we encourage our sports stars to go overseas, the vast gaps between hotspots can quickly escape their attention.

Instead of Bale’s game leaving us a little cold, it was Bale himself. British football has always demanded that its heroes look like a genius was never born without football’s anachronistic holy trinity of blood, sweat and tears. Not only was Bale ill-suited to these demands, he was a ready antidote. He had the laconic grace and fat percentage of an ancient Greek statue. He had a bundle. He got injured regularly. He openly admitted that football is not his whole world and may not even be his favorite sport.

But here a trace of disappointment was revealed, it only betrays the cowardice of England. Although Bale was developed by English football and won his jewels in Spain, his heart never left Cardiff and his legacy is best preserved there. In addition to bringing his personal brand to the forefront of European football, Bale has taken Wales with him.

Only in hindsight can we recognize Bale as an outstanding player in Welsh sports, the only man whose marble column is as tall as that of John Charles. It’s not that Wales has never had brilliant personalities – Mark Hughes, Ian Rush, Ryan Giggs and Neville Southall may have been the best players in their roles, at least for a moment or longer. But never before has man had such a demonstrably potentially positive influence on his environment.

When Bale tweeted on Monday that the Wales team lives inside him and flows through his veins, people believe him. He proved this not only by his example on the field, but also by his humility towards teammates who became friends, who became brothers. They were asked over and over again about Bale’s personality and always the same answer: smile, look down for a moment and then somehow explain that he was an ordinary boy from Cardiff who was never happier than when you are nothing else was not expected from him. then a normal boy from Cardiff.

This identity was intentionally hidden. In some places, this has been misinterpreted as a vacuum. Bale enjoyed his happiest moments on his own terms. Why talk to the Spanish media that have slandered you? Why go to meet someone more than halfway through who doesn’t offer the same privilege? He wasn’t interested in boring swear words from people who didn’t know him. During the first lockdown, Bale donated £1 million, split equally between Spain and Wales, to health councils to thank them for their tireless work helping Covid-19 patients.

Life in Madrid, if not in Madrid, is outdated. Bale was for some time the club’s highest paid player and barely played. He refused to terminate the contract requested by the club, preferring his own agency. Had it been anyone else, it could have been a tedious and grim ending to a lost career.

Not here. If there is an artery that runs through Bale’s career, the only thing that makes him pretty much unique is that he doesn’t need club football at all. Bale’s best nights were not in Kyiv or Lisbon, as magical as they were, but at the Cardiff City stadium against Austria and Ukraine, when Wales ended their generations of World Cup absences, and when the Red Wall sang Calon Lahn so loudly that you could sing in Welsh. feel pure osmosis. He won these connections not only, but thanks to him more than anyone else. Such a country will remember a career. Bale will certainly do the same.