Kenny Dalglish is one of the greatest footballers and footballer managers ever. No need to discuss…it is a fact, pure and simple. So when, at the end of 2010, he put on his critic’s hat and assessed the year just gone, his word counted for rather more than your average Fleet Street footie scribbler. This was, after all, the man who had been there, done it and got the T-shirt to prove it.
Writing in his weekly Mail on Sunday column on Boxing Day, he pinpointed Gareth Bale’s arrival on the scene under the appropriate heading ‘The Discovery of the Season’. Dalglish then said of Bale: ‘He really came of age in 2010. The Spurs man showed glimpses towards the end of last season of what he was capable of, and this term he has been virtually unplayable. The way the young Welshman twice took Inter Milan apart won’t be forgotten in a hurry. His big test is to try to reproduce that form consistently over years, not months. Then he will be a genuine world-beater.’
You could also argue that the last two sentences summed up the Tottenham team as a whole – and the ‘big test’ boss Redknapp faced if he was to keep the likes of Bale and Van der Vaart happy. They would certainly need to reproduce the form they had shown so brilliantly from August 2010 if they were to progress and win trophies: the essential prerequisite for both Gareth and Rafael if they were to commit to the Lane for the long-term.
After the thrill of winning their Champions League group, Tottenham and Gareth were rightly looking forward to 2011 with optimism and relish. But they still had three games to play before the old year would be gone for good: Chelsea at home, Aston Villa away and Newcastle at home. In the old days, you would probably have agreed that Spurs could expect five points out of nine – a draw with Chelsea and Villa at best and a win over Newcastle. In the event, they would amass seven points, much more to the form of title contenders or, at the very least, contenders for that fourth Champions League spot.
The big match among the three was, of course, the one with London rivals, Chelsea. The Blues were the reigning Premier League champions and would provide a reliable yardstick of just how far Gareth and the team had truly come on.
Gareth himself upped the ante for the game when he spoke to Ian Wright on Absolute Radio a few days before the match. He proclaimed he was confident Spurs could win the title – which meant, of course, he was confident they could see off the challenge of Chelsea at the Lane.
Gareth said: ‘I think we are a lot more confident now, obviously qualifying for the Champions League and a string of good results in the league. I think we’ve all got more belief that we can compete up there with the best teams and we will be working our hardest to do that.
‘I definitely feel like all of the lads feel like we’ve got the kind of squad that is capable of being up in the mix and you never know hopefully we can be in there with a shot. We go into every game looking to get at win and especially at home. We are all confident of beating anybody at home as we showed last season against Arsenal and Chelsea and this year of the likes of Inter Milan so we’re all confident that we can win games.’
In another interview Gareth admitted that the three straight wins against top opposition – Arsenal, Bremen and Liverpool at the back end of November – had convinced him that Spurs were now a team with sufficient class, character and strength to mount a credible challenge on all fronts. He said: That was a massive week for the club. We had two unbelievable results in the league and to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League was something special. We just want to build on this now. The lads are full of confidence, the team’s playing well and there’s no better feeling. It’s a great team to play in.
‘We’ve got a close squad, everyone gets along well and I think that shows in the game. We work for each other and that’s why we’re getting results. A lot of our points this season have come from being behind…but it’s not nice going behind, even though we seem to do well from that position. We definitely want to keep more clean sheets now and keep winning.’
And in an interview with the official Tottenham club website, Gareth outlined just why he thought his form had been so brilliant this season. He said: ‘In the past I’ve had injuries and coming back from them hasn’t been too easy. I had to be patient not being in the team for a long time and you’ve got to be ready to take the opportunity when you get it. There was a lot of talk about me going on loan and I don’t know if anything was ever going to happen. Benoit Assou-Ekotto got injured, I got my chance and I’ve been prepared for a while, doing a lot of running after training just to get ready. My chance came and I was there to take it.’
He said he had put in a lot of extra hours on the training pitch so that he was fit and ready; that he had been determined to nail down a place in the starting XI. When asked why he kept such a low profile, and did so few interviews, he replied: ‘I just want to keep it low key and concentrate on my football.’
Gareth’s profile was also boosted before the Chelsea match by Barcelona’s 5-0 thrashing of Real Madrid in Spain. It emerged that after the crushing loss Real boss Jose Mourinho confronted his board of directors and blamed them for the defeat – saying that if they had given him the money to buy Gareth, it wouldn’t have happened. Football writer Steve Featherstone summed it up in this way: ‘Mourinho shocked his employers after the 5-0 capitulation at Barcelona, by insisting that to reach the heights of the Catalan opponents they need one thing. Gareth Bale. Bale, 21, has had a meteoric rise to fame this season in a Spurs side that are turning heads at every stage in the Champions League.
‘Bale himself has been the catalyst for many of their top performances and his single-handed destruction on Mourinho’s former employers Inter Milan has done enough to convince the ‘Special One’ Bale is the final piece of his Madrid jigsaw. Of course, many believe that Mourinho was trying to divert attention away from the fact Barcelona had just crucified his side in front of one of the biggest audiences in the world. The Spanish press were immediately throwing about figures of up to £80 million for the Welsh wonder, a far cry from just over a year ago when he was used primarily as a squad player at the Lane.’
There was also the little matter of winning the 2010 BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year. Gareth succeeded Ryan Giggs and was presented with the award by Spurs great Clive Allen at Tottenham’s training ground. He beat Commonwealth champion bowler Robert Weale into second and 400m hurdles champion Dai Greene to third. Gareth told BBC Wales: ‘It was a great honour just to be put up for the award so to win it is something special. I remember when I was a younger I was up for the young sports personality award and to be up for this now, shows how much I have come in the last couple of years.
‘It has been a great year for me playing week in, week out, I’ve scored a few goals and the team qualified for the Champions League so there have been a lot of highlights but I’m just concentrating now and building for the future.’ Typical of the boy, always humble, always more interested in getting back to work than playing ‘the big I am’.
And he would do just that with the visit of Chelsea to the Lane on December 12. Gareth and his team-mates were convinced now was as good a time as any to get a result…the Blues had won just one of their five previous matches and, in an unusually nervy, unsteady patch, had lost two of them.
It was a stark contrast to the thrilling football Carlo Ancelotti’s team had exhibited at the start of the season with goals now hard to come by and defensive deficiencies clear to see. Club captain John Terry had been hit by injuries and looked a yard short of pace and it would be down to Portuguese fullback Paulo Ferreira to halt the runaway train that was Gareth Bale. Ferreira lasted just 45 minutes in the corresponding fixture the previous season as Bale gave him a merry runaround, scoring the second in a 2-1 win for Spurs.
Even bookies William Hill felt pity on Chelsea and the prospect of facing Gareth, highlighting that he was the man most likely to destroy them. Their spokesman said: ‘The focal point remains Bale as he continues to impress everyone with his storming performances from the left wing. Already this season he has made two of the best right backs in the game in Maicon and Bacary Sagna look average, it could be Jose Bosingwa is added to that list by the Sunday night. His pace, strength and determination are a defender’s worst nightmare and even with John Terry back in the fold and Petr Cech in top form you’d be mad to think they can silence him from start to finish.
‘The Welsh wideman doesn’t just turn on the style against the chaff either, in fact his best performances have come when the cameras are paying particularly close attention – which they will be on Sunday. The best bit is that he’s a whopping 10/3 to score anytime – it’s an absolute steal given Chelsea’s recent wobbles. Their trip to Marseille on Wednesday said a lot about their recent issues as a toothless attack failed to breach the French side’s defence as they fell to a 1-0 loss.’
Finally, Chelsea got a warning shot from Spurs themselves, or more specifically, full-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto, who said: ‘Bale is one of the best players in Europe at the moment. We have to keep him for a long time if we want to be successful. I’m just glad I am a left-back and he’s left midfield as it means I don’t even have to face him in training. He can cause so many problems, so whoever has to face him will worry.
‘If Spurs want to be a very big club one day, like Chelsea or Manchester United, we have to keep him. We don’t want to try and sell him to the other big clubs.
‘We have started well this season. We are new in the Champions League and we have had to get used to playing twice a week, which is not easy. But we have to get on with it if we want to finish fourth. We want to finish higher than that and I think we can.
‘It’s an open league this year but we need to keep going and make sure we beat the likes of Chelsea, United and Arsenal. We’re good enough and have proved it but the key is to keep going and not lose focus.’
Well, this – against the reigning champions – was his and Tottenham’s chance to show they did have what it takes to make a genuine title challenge.
Gareth wouldn’t come up against Bosingwa – but his replacement Paulo Ferreira would have nightmares about the game for some time to come.
Before the match, Ferreira had sounded confident he could tame Bale, saying: ‘If I have to play against Gareth Bale again, I will be ready. I will try to give everything. He did very well against me last April [when Gareth scored as Tottenham beat Chelsea 2-1 at White Hart Lane] but let’s see what he will do this time. He is in great shape and it will be difficult to mark him but Spurs are not just about Bale. They have a good team as well. He is a very quick player and it is hard to keep up with him. Even Maicon struggled against him earlier in the season for Inter and he is one of the best right-backs in the world but I will do everything to stop him.’
That everything Ferreira spoke about would, unfortunately for him, turn out to be not quite enough. OK, by his own exacting standards, Gareth would have one of his quieter days at the office – although he did leave Ferreira for dead on several occasions.
Tottenham had gone ahead in the 15th minute with a goal from Roman Pavlyuchenko, but spurned the chance of closing the gap on the top four as the match ended 1-1. An angry Didier Drogba, depressed because Ancelotti had started him on the bench, earned Chelsea a point in the 70th minute. Keeper Gomes allowed the Ivory Coast striker’s shot to slip through his hands.
Indeed, Drogba should have won it for the Blues but Gomes saved his penalty after the keeper had upended Ramires in the penalty area.
A sign of Bale’s increasing fame came when Michael Essien went in on him studs showing, bruising his ankle. Gareth was predictably angry but Essien did not even receive a yellow card. As Gareth’s reputation grew, so did the attention – legitimate or otherwise – that he received from the opposition.
Tottenham had left Chelsea gasping for breath early on, but finished holding on for a point – so the outcome was probably a fair reflection. But those early marauding attacks showed that Gareth and Co had come a long way; from now on, they had earned the right to be seen as equals to the reigning champions. At least.
The Daily Telegraph’s Henry Winter summed up that changed state of affairs when he revealed that Spurs were not at all pleased by the 1-1 draw: ‘Tottenham’s disappointment last night spoke of their heightened expectations. Harry Redknapp has engendered a belief in his players that they can compete for the major honours. If Gareth Bale has shone all term, the eye-catching return of Michael Dawson from ligament surgery added further credibility to their ambitions.’
Winter was right. A Spurs source added: ‘It’s true, no way were the lads pleased to have got one point. They thought they could have beaten Chelsea – in no way did they feel less than against them. Gareth and the lads were hardly celebrating; they were down in the dumps. It was an opportunity missed to throw down a real marker – to prove that they could beat the reigning champions and could, therefore, be considered realistic contenders for the title. Harry was also down, but was brilliant – he told the lads to go away and keep their chins up, that they would have better days, and that they were good enough to challenge for the title.’
Harry was just as defiant in his press conference after the match, confirming his belief that his team were worthy to be seen as potential champions. He said: ‘The title race is very open. I saw Manchester City and they’re strong. United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham. It’s open. It’s tightened up a lot, and lots of games have become tougher to win. Maybe in all honesty the top teams are not as good as they used to be.
‘United aren’t as good as they were with Ronaldo and Tevez. Chelsea have had injuries. Against Sunderland, who did fantastic, their back four was not there, they had no Lampard or Essien, no Terry. When they get them back they will be strong. Maybe the top teams aren’t quite as strong as they were a year or two ago.’
Harry was in a slightly mischievous mood as exemplified by his final comment when he said that if Frank Lampard had taken the penalty instead of Drogba, he would ‘definitely’ have scored!
That was about the only moment of fun after the match in the Spurs camp. ‘The lads had a few days off from the next match, but it wasn’t time spent relaxing,’ says a Spurs source. ‘No, Harry had them out training hard. He and they all believed they had missed a great chance of showing they should be seen as a real threat in the title race – Gareth and the lads knew they would have put down a real marker if they had beaten Chelsea. OK, a draw was not the end of the world, but they all felt they had enough in the tank to have beaten them.’
The next match in the Christmas schedule looked a tricky one; away at Aston Villa the following Sunday, December 26. Fortunately, the hard work of the previous week, on the training ground and in the gym when the weather turned too snowy and icy, paid dividends. The boys came away from Birmingham with a precious 2-1 win. A brace from the ever-impressive Van der Vaart killed off the Villa, who had only a late Marc Albrighton consolation goal to lift their spirits. Ironically, it had been the young Villa right-winger who had claimed before the game that he felt he could help negate the effect of Gareth down his side of the field. He had said: ‘It will be a tough afternoon with the likes of Gareth, who is up there as one of the best in the world at the moment – but that’s part of my job. All the top wingers get back to help their full-back out, it’s vital. He is having a fantastic season and is showing himself to be an unbelievable player – I rate him massively.
‘He’s shown that on the Premier League stage and in the Champions League. He tore world-class defenders apart like they weren’t there. Just look at his performance against Maicon of Inter Milan. It was sensational. He’ll be tough to cope with but I’m confident we have the players to do that. If we keep him quiet, hopefully that means we keep Tottenham quiet and get a good result.’
It didn’t quite work that way, but you can’t fault the young man for his confidence. Another irony was that the result had been exactly the same when the teams had met at the Lane on October 2 in the same competition (the Premier League), with the same scorers. Yes, it had been 2-1 to Tottenham thanks to goals from Van der Vaart, although Albrighton had put Villa ahead that day.
The match at Villa Park almost three months later, in the grip of bitterly cold winter weather, also served as a reminder of just how far Gareth had come since the start of the season. He had scored 10 goals already during the campaign and, before kick off, was being lauded by Harry Redknapp for providing the most crosses in the Premier League so far that season – a total of 136.
Peter Crouch also spoke out about how much of a joy it was to play up front when he had Gareth on one wing and Lennon on the other, constantly supplying him with fine crosses. ‘He [Bale] was great last year, but now in the Champions League it’s more high profile,’ Crouch told the People. ‘As a striker, it’s a dream to have him on the left and Aaron Lennon on the right. You just have to get yourself in the box and you know nine times out of ten, they will get the right cross in for you.’
Crouch also said that Gareth was always ‘brilliant’ in training when the striker first joined the club, adding that the Welshman and Arsenal winger Theo Walcott were always touted as potential world-beaters when they were with him at Southampton. He said: ‘Gareth was in the youth set-up when I was at Southampton, and I used to hear people talking about him and Walcott all the time. When I first signed for Spurs, Gareth was in and out of the side – but in training he was brilliant. It was just a case of when he started doing it more consistently and now he is doing it week in, week out against some of the best players in the world.’
As against Chelsea, Gareth was not at his scintillating best at Villa Park. But he didn’t need to be. Villa had gone backwards under new boss Gerard Houllier, who appeared determined to rip up the blueprint for success drawn up by previous incumbent Martin O’Neill. Spurs fans were taunting their opposite numbers in the Holte End long before the final whistle; two chants proving particularly galling for the Brummies…‘We only had ten men’ and ‘You’re not very good’. Galling in the sense that, well, yes, they were true.
Jermain Defoe’s controversial sending-off midway through the first half for elbowing James Collins looked like putting a spanner in the works for Redknapp’s game plan (which was basically to outplay and outfox Villa in the midfield battle zone and then hit them fast and hard). But that was not the case; in fact, the sending off merely seemed to spur Spurs on and the win moved them to within one point of the top four.
Gareth had played a key part in the second goal, running from deep in his own half before passing to Lennon, who then set up Van der Vaart for his second goal of the afternoon (and his 10th of the season in all competitions).
Afterwards Redknapp was delighted with the character his team had shown in triumphing with ten men. He told BBC Sport: ‘We fight to the end. Playing like this it should be a great season for us. Losing Jermain made it difficult, but we kept the ball well. At half-time I said to the lads I felt there was another goal for us. In the second half they pressed us better but we hit them with a fantastic goal.
‘When you can win away with 10 men I think we did a great job. The second one was really important and then I had the feeling we would win the game.’
And so it was on to the club’s final match of an eventful 2010 – the home clash with Newcastle United.
But first Gareth would carry out a Christmas charity visit close to his heart. He and team-mate Jonathan Woodgate met parents and children at Whipps Cross University Hospital in Leytonstone, east London, as part of the club’s annual visit to the hospital. Gareth said: ‘It’s always an emotional time. We come to see the kids and it’s nice to pay a visit. It’s nice to be able to give something back, especially around Christmas time.’
And the staff at the hospital certainly enjoyed seeing Gareth and Jonathan. Whipps Cross head of nursing Eileen Elms said: ‘We are extremely grateful to Spurs for this annual visit – they are always very co-operative, spend genuine time talking to the children and parents on the ward and really do make a difference to the environment over the Christmas period, which is a difficult time for anyone to be in hospital.
‘The club is very generous with their gifts and make sure all the children get the right present – for this we would like to thank them.’
Then it was back to business for Gareth, with the visit of the Toon Army, who had proved something of a surprise package since coming up from the Championship at the start of the campaign. In big, raw centre-forward Andy Carroll, they had a man who was frightening defenders all over the country – and a man who could well turn out to be the English national team’s centre-forward for the next decade if he did not implode through a variety of personal demons.
Certainly Harry Redknapp appreciated the young man’s burgeoning talent and had him on his transfer radar, although the big striker would eventually end up at Liverpool for a remarkable record fee for a British player of £35 million at the end of the January transfer window in 2011.
But Harry knew he already had some world beaters in his current squad – and he did little to disguise the fact that he recognised Gareth was chief among them. Before the match, he told reporters: ‘For me, at this particular time, he’s got to be the footballer of the year in this country. I can’t think of anyone who’s done as well as him. He’s not a player that we would really want to sell. You’ve got to hang onto your best players.’
One wag of a journo asked Harry if there was any truth in the rumours circulating about a possible swap deal for Manchester City’s Emmanuel Adebayor and Gareth Bale. Ridiculous query really given that Adebayor was worth about £15 million – and a month later would be siphoned off to Real Madrid on loan by his unimpressed City boss Roberto Mancini – while the bidding for Bale would surely only start at £45 million plus.
Harry joked: ‘Yeah I thought we’d have a straight swap. I thought it sounds like a good deal. It’s not April 1st is it? I’ve never made any inquiries regarding him. I keep reading in the papers that we’re after him but that’s nothing but a big lie. Gareth Bale is going nowhere right now, as I’m not planning to put him on sale but my decision wouldn’t be final.’
The News of the World put the story into a slightly more realistic perspective when it said that City had actually offered Adebayor and £50 million for Bale – a total of around £65 million. But even that made Harry laugh; he had no intention of selling his star man.
Andy Carroll and Newcastle would put up a spirited fight on Boxing Day, but would still go down 2-0 at the Lane, despite facing 10 men for the last 35 minutes. The Sun’s Pat Sheehan best summed up the importance of a gritty win by Gareth and the boys when he wrote: ‘Make no mistake, this was not a victory over a flaky Newcastle side but a heart-pumping, edge-of-the-seat thriller over Alan Pardew’s battling, organised team who were undone by Luka Modric’s brilliance.
‘For the first time in years, Tottenham are taking the field expecting to win rather than simply believe they are in with a chance. The north Londoners have gatecrashed the top four with a fair share of drama, a large dollop of class and now a touch of steel that underpins every great side.
‘Okay, maybe great is too strong a word to describe Tottenham’s season just yet but they have emerged from the pack of hopefuls to become genuine contenders.’
It is easy to see what Pat meant when you look at the stirring performance and the undoubted quality of the second goal, the final one of Tottenham’s amazing 2010 – a classic scored, inevitably enough, by Gareth himself.
Aaron Lennon had put Spurs ahead just before the hour mark, jinking in from the right and smashing a lovely shot pat the hapless Tim Krul in the Toon goal.
But Gareth’s goal was something else – a microcosm of the macrocosm that was his fantastic season so far. It had all the ingredients that had propelled him to worldwide fame in the two Milan games. Namely his speed, skill and deadly finishing.
Luka Modric sent Gareth on his way down that left wing and the Welshman seemed to pick up even more speed as he zoomed in on the goal and the figure of Krul, who looked like the proverbial rabbit caught in car headlights.
The keeper had absolutely no chance as Gareth then pulled the trigger, unleashing a mighty shot past him and into the corner of the net with just nine minutes remaining. Redknapp commented later on the goal, saying: ‘Gareth’s done that all season. He went on the outside of Newcastle defender Steven Taylor and smashed it in. Ten goals is an amazing stat for Gareth. You want your central midfield player to get six or seven and your front men to get a few more, but he’s scored his goals as a winger.’
Soccer365.com also provided a fine description of Gareth’s goal, saying it showed they should now be taken seriously as a real top four outfit: ‘Bale scored another magical goal, as he and Tottenham continue to act like the real deal. Spurs’ 2-0 victory over Newcastle came as a result of two goals of the highest quality. Aaron Lennon showed world-class technique when he took a simple touch into space, then sent the ball flying into the far corner.
‘Bale’s goal typified the daring of his play this year. After receiving the ball on the left he cut outside, then inside to lose his defender, before firing a bullet of a shot into the bottom corner from a difficult angle. With Tottenham’s stars playing like true stars, there are few that would rule out Spurs’ contention for Europe next year.’
The win over the Geordies was due reward for the player of the season so far – and for he and his team-mates efforts in the match after Younes Kaboul was sent off for stupidly butting Cheik Tioté. It was also only Spurs’ second clean sheet of the campaign – the first coming in the opening match against Manchester City – and Gareth used his post-match comments to gave a much-needed verbal fillip to the regularly under-fire keeper Gomes.
He said: ‘Gomes has been outstanding all season making unbelievable saves. I think Gomes is THE best, he pulls out saves from nowhere because he is so lanky. ‘It’s great for the team, it gives us confidence at the back and we keep scoring goals at the other end. He has shown for a long while what a high class keeper he is. ‘He has pulled off some fantastic saves this season, week in and week out and hopefully he can carry on keeping a lot more clean sheets in the future.
‘The criticism is unfair on him if you have watched him this season he is the best keeper I have ever seen in my life. He has been an outstanding keeper since I have been here and hopefully he can keep getting better and better.’
He then told Sky Sports he was delighted with his goal, saying: ‘It was nice to get on the scoresheet. I’ve got a few goals this season and I want to keep working hard, scoring goals and most importantly helping the team. ‘We’ve had a good couple of days and a good Christmas. We’ll be going into a big London derby looking for three points and there’s no reason why we can’t.’
Gareth also told the official Spurs website he was delighted at the way the festive period had seen the team earn maximum points from the victories over Villa and now Newcastle. He said he felt the way Spurs battled to victory despite being down to ten men in both games showed their character and desire to win was stronger than ever.
And he said he hoped the holiday period run would end in style with a win over Fulham on New Year’s Day. Gareth said: ‘It was a great win over Newcastle and it’s been a good Christmas period for us. Now we want to take this into the New Year, keep plugging away and get the maximum points like we know we can.
‘It’s been difficult. Playing two games in three days is difficult enough with 11 men, but playing most of the game at Villa with 10 men is much harder work and the last half hour against Newcastle was a lot of hard work. But we showed the character we’ve got, the work ethic we’ve got and we came away with maximum points from the two games and hopefully we can take that into the New Year now.’
He added that he and Spurs’ other creative players were enjoying the opportunity to counter attack: ‘Sometimes when the opposition attacks it gives the opportunity for me, Aaron, Luka and Rafa to get forward and counter attack them like we did against Villa and Newcastle.
‘We showed what we can do. Hopefully we can take that into the second half of the season where it counts and push on.’
Boss Redknapp was also delighted with the result and the character his men had shown. He said: ‘It’s been a great run and a good start to the Christmas period. Six points is a good start. Three more on Saturday [against Fulham] would be fantastic. But it’s going to be hard staying in the top four this season, tougher than the last. United are certainties. City and Arsenal are strong and I think Chelsea will come back strong. I wouldn’t rule them out of the title yet. They’ve had a bad run, but when Frank Lampard and Michael Essien get back fit, you’ll see a different Chelsea. I wouldn’t write them off.
‘City have improved a lot since last year with the money they’ve spent, so it’s going to be close, very tight. If we can make it again this year, it’ll be great. Who knows where we’ll finish if we can get in there.’
As 2010 shuddered to its inexorable end, December ended much as it had begun. With more accolades – to add to the one from Dalglish – pouring forth for Gareth and the dramatic advances he had made during the year. On Boxing Day, the Observer’s Paul Hayward decided Bale was the Player of the Season (so far). Crowning him, Hayward said: ‘None of the other names advanced as player-of-the-year-so-far can beat the revelatory force of Bale’s presence in an improving Tottenham side. His emergence at outside-left offers proof that young, potential-rich players tend to need a buoyant working atmosphere to fulfil their own promise.’
Could Gareth win the PFA Player of the Year award? The bookies, Betfair, suggested it was unlikely but that it was not impossible. Dan ‘The Betting Man’ Fitch explained: ‘The Premier League season may be at its rough halfway point, but there is another hotly contested title that is already on its back straight. Due to the fact that the votes for the PFA Player of the Year awards are cast well in advance of the end of the season, the race for that individual title is now approaching a climax.
‘The favourite to win the title is Gareth Bale. Having only broken into Tottenham’s first team last season, Bale has been brilliant this campaign, destroying both domestic defences and those in the Champions League. If Bale were to win the award, he would probably have to break a longstanding voting pattern amongst his peers. In the Premier League era, only one man has ever been voted as Player of the Year, without playing for a side that finished within the top three.’
Maybe it was a mere coincidence…or maybe a good omen, but that player who broke the mould was none other than David Ginola, in 1993 and, of course, he was playing for Tottenham at the time.
In the Daily Telegraph, Andrew Fifield commented on how Gareth and Spurs had taken the Champions League by storm, saying: ‘Watching Spurs in Europe is rather akin to seeing a teenager drive a Ferrari: they don’t quite know how they got their hands on it and it’s probably all going to end in tears, but they are sure going to enjoy the ride while it lasts. Their six games delivered 31 goals – by far the highest aggregate in the competition – and saw them top a supposed group of death, while making a world star out of Gareth Bale.’
He said the high point was Tottenham’s 3-1 win over Inter Milan when the ‘reigning champions were flattered to lose 3-1 on a night when Bale left Maicon, supposedly the world’s best right-back, looking like he belonged on Hackney Marshes.’ Fifield argued that Tottenham could go further in the competition and do well the following season ‘provided they can keep Bale and Harry Redknapp…’
The Independent’s Sam Wallace also picked out Gareth’s demolition of Maicon as his footballing moment of 2010, saying: ‘My moment of the year, for sheer, rip-roaring, up-and-at-them excitement is Bale’s performance against Internazionale in the home game at White Hart Lane on 2 November. I could have picked the second half of the game at San Siro when, after all, he scored a hat-trick in a 4-3 defeat were it not for the fact that there was something mesmerising about his performance in north London.
‘Every great performance requires talent, self-belief and determination – of which Bale had all. Great performances are also measured by the stature of the opponent who is overcome and in the Inter full-back Maicon there was no greater test for Bale.’
Soccer magazine offered some controversy – by refusing to pick Gareth for the left midfield/wing role, saying it should go to Andreas Iniesta of Barcelona. They wrote: ‘We could put Gareth Bale as left midfielder but that place is reserved for Iniesta. But because of Bale’s very powerful left foot and his speed, we simply had to find him the place in the “Best Eleven”, so he is our left fullback. Although he didn’t win anything last year, he thrilled the soccer world with his performances against Inter in Champions League…he scored a hat-trick in the first game and in the second he caused major problems for Inter’s defenders.’
Goal’s Ewan MacDonald argued that Gareth was certainly one, if not the, best young player in the Champions League so far. He said: ‘Perhaps the best youngster of all in the group stages – and certainly the only one to make Carlo Garganese’s [editor of Goal.com] Team of the Group Stage – Gareth Bale had fans worldwide glued to their screens as he ran riot in Spurs’ famous win over Inter. Maicon, once almost invulnerable at right-back, was made to look ponderous and irresponsible by the Welshman, who has inevitably found himself linked with no small number of clubs, ranging from Manchester United to Real Madrid.’
Respected Sky Sports pundit Chris Kamara also pointed to Gareth being the star of the season so far, although he also emphasised he felt Arsenal’s Samir Nasri was in the same class. Kamara told Skysport.com: ‘Arsenal have always had someone special in their team - from Thierry Henry to Dennis Bergkamp – and they’ve been looking for someone to step forward this year. Samir Nasri has done that and he was wonderful against Fulham. On Goals On Sunday this weekend, I discussed the Player of the Season so far with Ben Shephard and Ian Holloway and we decided it was between Nasri and Gareth Bale. Ben said the best performance was Bale’s against Inter, but the more consistent player was Nasri. ‘Personally, I think it’s hard to compare them because Bale has a more regulated position on the left wing and will be tightly marked some weeks. Nasri is more of a floating player and he can go about his business a lot more easily. What I would say is that they’re two outstanding individuals and they’ve lit up the Premier League for the first half of the season.’
Another Sky pundit and Daily Mail columnist, Jamie Redknapp, also had kind words for Gareth, saying in his Mail column: ‘We’ve all gone Gareth Bale crazy, but I picked him out as one of my players to watch for the season - I was hearing so many good things from the training pitch. He can now be the best left-sided player in the world. And he can do that playing for Tottenham…
‘With Gareth and Ryan Giggs, the two best left-sided players of the last 20 years have both been Welsh. It’s a weak position in the England team and we have all had to look jealously towards Wales.’
Then Gareth earned an accolade from abroad when he was been included in the team of the year chosen by the readers of the respected and influential Madrid-based sports newspaper Marca. The poll received more than 125,000 votes and Gareth was in exulted company in the line-up. The team lined up like this: Casillas (Real Madrid); Maicon (Inter Milan), Pique (Barcelona), Puyol (Barcelona), Bale (Spurs); Xabi Alonso (Real Madrid), Xavi (Barcelona), Iniesta (Barcelona); Ronaldo (Real Madrid), Villa (Barcelona), Messi (Barcelona).
Gareth was the only British player selected, making the side at left-back in a team containing seven of Spain’s World Cup-winning side, and only one other player outside that country…ironically, it was Maicon, the man whose reputation he wrecked while at the same time as establishing his own in the two Champions League group encounters against Inter Milan.
Finally, the fans back in the UK had their say. Of course, in the UK, many had openly embraced Gareth as their Player of the 2010/11 Season (so far), but even abroad Tottenham fans were hailing him as simply the best.
A typical example was from the Tottenham Hotspur Canadian Supporters’ Club, who declared on their website, spurscanada.ca, on Boxing Day: ‘Nobody can deny how great Gareth Bale is. He is fast, two footed and strong. He can go inside and out, play defensive and attacking but most of all his main virtue is in his mind. He has great desire and this desire propels him to go forward and make things happen – even sometimes when there seems there is no hope. We all know what he did to Maicon in Milan and then back at Tottenham. No team can feel comfortable playing against him or Tottenham today. When they double and triple mark him, it opens the door for great runs by Lennon on the other side. When they stop Lennon it all went through Modric. Gareth Bale sets the tone for the team and the pace and he can win games alone and open the door for all of our attacking weapons.’
There is a saying in football that the fan always knows best: I think those comments from Canada prove it is correct. I particularly agree with the idea that ‘his main virtue is in his mind’. It is an analysis that few pundits have made but, when you think about it, is massively appropriate. After all, this was the boy who had the strength of mind to come back after several injury layoffs determined to reach the very top – and who worked doggedly hard to do just that.
In 2010 Gareth had been named BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year, shortlisted for the FIFA/FIFpro and UEFA.com Teams of the Year, named BBC London Footballer of the Year and was third in World Soccer magazine’s Young Player of the Year.
And as we rang in the new year of 2011, there was no doubt that he had certainly earned all the plaudits and accolades. And just to ram home the fact that Tottenham viewed him as their key man for the future, Daniel Levy added to the constant denials from Harry Redknapp that Gareth would not be sold in the January transfer window. The Spurs chairman told the club’s AGM: ‘I’ve never deemed us to be a selling club. Both [Dimitar] Berbatov and Michael Carrick had two years left on their contract, both players wanted to go and that was the reason they were sold.
‘But in the case of Gareth, he’s got a long contract and I can assure you he will not be sold.’
So that was that. Gareth Bale would be going nowhere and he certainly had enough ambitions to keep him happy at the Lane for the foreseeable future.
As 2011 loomed, he revealed to friends that he had a new aim…a new year’s resolution he was determined he would keep: he wanted to do even better in the second half of the season and, hopefully, pick up even more honours and awards. This was not a boy who would be happy to simply rest on his laurels…