Gareth Bale is an interesting case in my theories of what it means to be a great footballer. In his early years with Spurs, I was obsessed with the fact they never won when he was playing - it was (not sure if it still is) the longest stretch for a player not to win a game in Premier League history.
When he suddenly got brilliant, that all seemed like a particularly funny coincidence. But if i'm to be consistent to my own idea of what makes a footballer, none of it is coincidence.
That thought came back to me when Bale re-signed for Spurs this year, and, with the team 3-0 up, came on for his first appearance as a substitute against West Ham with about 20 minutes to go, only for it all to go awry, resulting in a 3-3 draw.
I've also been thinking, separately, about the greatest footballers I've ever seen in the flesh. For a Spurs fan, I haven't watched them all that many times. The last time was an FA Cup match vs Fulham in 2010. I sat with the Fulham fans. Spurs won. I remembered the game dimly, that Fulham were better in the first half, but Spurs came back strongly and won 3-1 and I had to pretend indifference.
I looked the game up online - pleasingly, both Bale and Luka Modric, two of the great footballers of the last decade, were playing. I then had a memory (perhaps false) of thinking at the game, "Aah, finally Bale is good". Closer inspection reveals that game indeed took place just at the pivot point when Bale became brilliant, and then became a superstar. For the next three years, he was sensational for Spurs, earning his record transfer to Madrid, where his legacy is soured and up for grabs, but the successes should be indisputable.
Yet Zinedine Zidane, when he came in as manager, didn't want to play him. And is it possible he was right? Is Bale one of those players who, unless magnificent, is bad. Is that the way the start and end of his career will be defined?
He was magnificent for Spurs for three years, and undoubtedly made an ok team a lot better, including reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League. He was also magnificent for Wales for several years, inspiring an ok team to the heights of the semi-finals of the European Championships. This proves that, at his best, he could be a team's Number 1 star (though it is to be noted that Spurs' best recent years have been since he left the club).
At Madrid, he went in as "second superstar", behind Ronaldo but not a standard team player either, expected to do incredible, stunning, unique things, but also defer to his more consistent and productive team-mate.
This set-up worked. He produced many extraordinary moments. https://www.youtube.com/watchv=yWVrolNQ4RU&ab_channel=RealMadrid This goal in the 2014 Copa de Rey was a preposterous combination of power, speed and skill. He was a bit like football's Jonah Lomu for a while.
Madrid won the Champions League four times when he was at he club, and he was integral to at least two of those. However, Barcelona remained, mainly, the dominant team in the league - Bale, with his injuries, his inconsistencies and highly specific set of skills, didn't quite bring the all-round dominance Madrid might have hoped for.
Maybe he's like an uber-Gerrard, a cup specialist, a master of moments rather than the man you can build your team on (that's the player Gerrard should have been, Liverpool made the mistake of building their team on him).
So, for me, that's the fascinating thing with Bale back at Spurs. Will it be a disaster? Will he be, past his best, an active negative for the team, like he was before his best, or will Mourinho deploy him wisely such that he brings real added value to a squad already full of attacking talent. Maybe he'll end up where he began, as the reserve left-back.
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