September 21 – Gareth Bale could stay at Tottenham Hotspur for longer than the one season loan the club have agreed with Real Madrid, according to his agent.
Bale, who left Tottenham in 2013 for a then world record fee of €100 million, recently rejoined the London club, with Real paying more than half his salary.
Bale won 13 major trophies with Real including four Champions Leagues titles, and is also the most successful overseas British player despite falling out with Real coach Zinedine Zidane.
“I’m sure that if things really worked out well, we’d have no problem,” said his agent Jonathan Barnett. “This is the club he wants to play at. I don’t see any problems if he wants another year.”
Bale, who was close to leaving Real Madrid for China in the summer of 2019, has a contract until 2022 with the Spanish giants and at the moment is scheduled to return at the end of the season.
He has been hampered by injuries in his time at Real and was booed by sections of the Spanish club’s fans during the 2018-19 season. Barnett, speaking to BBC Radio, says his client should have been treated better.
“In my opinion, he wasn’t treated correctly for somebody who’s done so much for a great club,” said Barnett. “I think that things were wrong.
“It’s hard to put one finger on it but I think somebody who has achieved what he has achieved for a club, in seven years, should have been treated better. I don’t want to blame anybody or go into it. I think what the fans did was disgraceful and the club didn’t help. That’s all I really want to get into.”
Bale has to shake off a minor knee injury before he can make his second debut for Spurs, probably after October’s international break.
Barnett leaped even more strongly to the defence of his client in a separate interview with Talksport.
Real Madrid, he said, “should be kissing the floor Bale walks on.”
“I’ve been his agent since he was a very young boy, and I am so proud of him. Not just for his achievements and everything else, but because he has become a great man. He’s never said anything wrong, he’s never done anything… his life has been exemplary really.
“When he came here one of the newspapers started writing articles about his family and his wife’s family in the papers – that is scandalous.
“This country should be very proud of him, Great Britain should be very proud of him. Stop knocking him and write what he’s done and what he’s achieved.
“It’s very annoying, and it’s the same with Real Madrid and what he’s achieved for them. They should be kissing the floor he walks on.”
Explaining Bale’s breakdown of communication in Madrid, Barnett continued: “It was a build-up of clash of personalities, a build-up of not being supported, it was many different things.
“For somebody who has done as well as he has for Real Madrid, he didn’t get the respect he deserved and that was a big problem.
“A lot has been written in the British press and the Spanish press about Gareth Bale that is so inaccurate it’s criminal.”
“If he was going to move this summer, it was only to somewhere where he could smile again and be happy, he wasn’t just going to move for the sake of it.
“We had other clubs, maybe bigger clubs than Tottenham, interested, but he had to happy with where he went and I think he is now.”
Barnett refused to confirm Manchester United were one of those clubs.
“I don’t really want to go into it, things need to stay private. But there were other clubs.”
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