Quite a few Brits bagged 3 in the Liverpool side too, including King Kenneth.
Bale booing continues | Declining?
- Thread starter Theafonis
- Start date
Gareth Bale was an effective footballer because he had extraordinary speed. That is gone and his poor football IQ is more on display now. His first touch is poor, he has no awareness, his passing/weight of pass is poor and all these negative traits are amplified when he is playing with abusrdly technical players such as Isco, Modric, Kovacic, Marcelo and Kroos.
None of this surprises me though as he has been poor since he went to Madrid. He has been good for a total of 8 months since he joined them. In his first season he was subpar and none of his teammates passed to him because he just ran into culdesacs, made poor decisions and all he could do was kick and run after the ball. Even the game against Barcelona where he beat Bartra in that copa del rey final he was subpar but he outpaced an injured Bartra and everyone forgot.
In the Champions League final in 2014 he was poor again and missed several chaces created for him that made the game much tougher for Madrid but he scored a tap in after Di Maria did all the hard work and people again forgot. Madrid's best spell under Ancelotti occurred when Bale got injured and They played the 442 with James Rodriguez-Modric-Kroos-Isco as the Midfield 4 and Benzema and Ronaldo up front. That was still the best MAdrid side I have witnessed since 2003. Bale is a typical British player that relies on his athleticism and requires space to operate. Add to the fact that he is injury prone and he can't speak spanish despite being there for 4 years and no one should really be surprised.
Under Benitez he played well because he was allowed to do what he wanted and the team played more around him but he is not good enough to warrant such treatment as he is not an all time talent or even a generational talent. He is just another overhyped player that had the Premier league machine behind him.
None of this surprises me though as he has been poor since he went to Madrid. He has been good for a total of 8 months since he joined them. In his first season he was subpar and none of his teammates passed to him because he just ran into culdesacs, made poor decisions and all he could do was kick and run after the ball. Even the game against Barcelona where he beat Bartra in that copa del rey final he was subpar but he outpaced an injured Bartra and everyone forgot.
In the Champions League final in 2014 he was poor again and missed several chaces created for him that made the game much tougher for Madrid but he scored a tap in after Di Maria did all the hard work and people again forgot. Madrid's best spell under Ancelotti occurred when Bale got injured and They played the 442 with James Rodriguez-Modric-Kroos-Isco as the Midfield 4 and Benzema and Ronaldo up front. That was still the best MAdrid side I have witnessed since 2003. Bale is a typical British player that relies on his athleticism and requires space to operate. Add to the fact that he is injury prone and he can't speak spanish despite being there for 4 years and no one should really be surprised.
Under Benitez he played well because he was allowed to do what he wanted and the team played more around him but he is not good enough to warrant such treatment as he is not an all time talent or even a generational talent. He is just another overhyped player that had the Premier league machine behind him.
So you're not a fan then?
After rejecting us 3 times, feck him and his sticky out ears!
An opinion based on observation. I don not particularly care for him personally.
Classic LOL
You getting to watch him live is all well and good. But he's been average (by high standards) and disappointing for a good while now whether it's fitness or peformances and there's no getting around that. If he improved as a player, and he probably did, he's also been quite a let down during various parts of his Madrid career.
@jojojo put it perfectly. There's always a feeling that he's a step behind his team mates when it comes to fitting into the system or the necessary standards of technical quality or the expectations. Which is why he gets so much criticism.
I'd stay well away from him. He's hugely reliant on pace and hasn't been at his best for a long time.
I have no interest in talking up a player that does not play for United, but have you watched him for Spurs and in his prime years at Madrid before those niggling injuries he got? Was top 4 or 5 in the world during that period of time
Step down from Southampton, and Spurs? Cause we were in for him twice then.
Can I ask the ones who do want him at Utd, why? As I see it he'd cost a bomb and possibly be injured a lot. He's also not very good anymore.
Was he? I don't think it was for long if this was the case. Messi, Xavi, Ronaldo and Iniesta dominated the top 4 for a long while. Then Suarez and Neymar came in and were phenomenal. At Madrid the Modric outperforms him easily (and almost everyone else to be fair). When exactly was he in the top 4 or 5? I'd have him in the top 10 at his very best but I don't think he's been truly truly elite ever. He has too many weaknesses for that IMO. A Suarez or Neymar is an absolutely complete elite player. Bale never had that sort of ability. Terrific player at his best of course. Pace, strength and superb finishing.
The premier League was very suited for him because of the spaces between the lines and the lack of tactics, particular at that time with team lacking any compactness so he was able to go on mazing runs. His best season irrc was when he essentially had a free role and played behind the striker and he was taking multiple shots from outside the box and he would generally play poorly then score a long distance shot then people would forget.
AT Madird he was still subpar and this has been masked by his decima goal. Rememeber when his agent came out and said noone wanted to pass to him and people blamed Ronaldo for his problems and there was even an issue about Ronaldo not hugging Bale? He does not link up well with teammates, he is a poor passer both in weight of pass and pass selection, he is terrible in tight spaces and needs space in front where he can kick it and uses his space to be effective. He was never a top player for me. Messi, Ronaldo, Iniesta, Xavi, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Luis Suarez. I can name footballers who I think are superiro to him but that's just off the top of my head from that period.
Now that his pace is failing him you are left with a poor excuse of a footballer. A good athelet but he was never ever close to being in the elite category for me as his skill set is too limited.
?
He's a great player trying to return to his best after injury. Whether he'll do so or not we'll see.
I don't know, to be honest.
He had a full summer last year at the Euros and injuries last season. That's bound to take its toll, but once the season is a couple of months old, then we'll have the answer.
If he plays.
I'd say we saw prime Bale on a consistent level between Benitez's last games in late 2015 and the EURO 2016, so perhaps 8 months. He was something else during that time, but sadly his fitness issues have stopped him from keeping it up. He had his difficulties before and after, both with injuries and his role at Real. But during that particular period he had a shot on being in this category. Don't know about top 5 (that's always hard to judge objectively), but one of the very best offensive players in the world for sure.
And while he's certainly no genius on the ball, I also think his technical abilities are a bit underrated by some. He's more than power, pace and finishing, and he inherited some 'Spanish' traits at Real imo.
This is how I view him too.
It would have to be a cut price deal and halved wages before Id consider it.
Can see Real replacing him with Griezmann as the next, overdue marquee signing tbh.
They're actually saying Boo-ale
The year Real Madrid won CL and he took his team to Euro Semi finals. He was easily Madrid's second best player and a top 5 player then.
Eexxcellent!Bale looks done at Madrid to me. Zidane now under increasing pressure because the Madrid fans would much prefer to see Asensio or Isco picked over Bale. They have both been in such outstanding form of late, and i can't see why Zidane would pick Bale over of those 2 either, based upon current form this season. If Bale doesn't hit top form very soon, he will lose his place to one of those mentioned and that will be that. The only uncertainty i see now is regarding how soon Bale accepts he will have to leave.
So why arn't Valencia, Welbeck, Bellerin, Aaron Lennon world beaters? Of course Bale uses his athlecism to his advantage as every world class forward, but to say that speed is all to Bale's game is really insulting.
I'm confused as to how you think someone who was involved in a goal every 76 minutes at Madrid had a "subpar" season. There was tension with his teammates and I admit that that was due to the fact that Bale had a tendacy to hog the ball in the final third instead of trusting his teammates, but this is understandable given that he was very much used to being the main man at Tottenham where all plays went through him.
He wasn't poor by any standards. He was Madrid's most dangerous player that game and got the winner. Why are you trying so hard to discredit him?
Where were the "several chances created" exactly? Most of the chances he had he played a very big part in the build up or where from his own interceptions. Nevertheless, He scored a crucial goal.
The most important thing in football is scoring goals because that is how you win games. Everything else is secondary.
It's a pretty short period, that. A player who is genuinely a top 5 player keeps up that quality. Bale seems to have been elevated by his team peformances and big moments in certain as opposed to playing at a complete level that's really elite. I mean, he never had a Suarez like season for Madrid. That's a player who could maintain his level across seasons. Bale was more a top ten to fifteen player who had a short purple patch spell where you could make an argument for him being top five.
Was he better than Di Maria btw? I genuinely can't remember.
Also how good was he at the euros? Seem to remember a lot of discussion about his actual peformances not being that great and it being more of a team effort, like Ronaldo.
It was certainly only a brief period, but 'purple patch' is still selling him short a bit; it was Bale's genuine quality that put him there, not just temporary über-form or his team elevating him. It can't be proven, but imo the difference to a mere purple patch is this: If he'd been injury-free, we would have seen more of that.
Time to take this post apart
The biggest problem right now is he's not a good fit for this team unless one of Benzema or Cristiano isn't playing. We can still get away with it against the weakest sides in Spain, but against serious opposition the BBC leaves too many holes in the team and doesn't have the workrate and class to make up for it anymore.
Nope, his IQ is pretty good overall, quite high off the ball. He was never all about pace
False-it's not great, but neither it is poor. False. False-he's no Messi but again, his crosses are good and he's not a bad passer. He's better at long passes than short ones, that's true, unless he's playing one-touch passes. Final point is true, but kinda circles around the point.
False. He was excellent in his first season, in large part because Cristiano was a different player and our midfield allowed us to play more to his strenghts. He was fantastic in 15/16, probably our mosy consistent player throughout the season and certainly the best in the final months. Our best player in Milan along with the two CBs, too
You're mixing up his first and second seasons mate. His first season was great and he was one of our main creative outlets
Wasteful =/= subpar. But i agree he wasn't great in that game overall.
Agree with every word here, except for "poor". "Apocalyptically terrible" should've been used instead
Agree with most of this. Bale however was injured for half the time benitez was in charge, and he clearly was one of the 6-7 best players in the world in the year 2016
The biggest problem right now is he's not a good fit for this team unless one of Benzema or Cristiano isn't playing. We can still get away with it against the weakest sides in Spain, but against serious opposition the BBC leaves too many holes in the team and doesn't have the workrate and class to make up for it anymore.
You mean for us? In 13/14? No, not even close. Di Maria was our second best player and the best player on the pitch by far in both finals(copa, cl)
Had a feeling this was the case. Thanks.
When Cris was out that season, we were very much Di Maria's team. Says it all
He's been declining since his 2nd season at Real Madrid. His first season there was a good one, but since then he's really done very little and he will never take over from Ronaldo as a player to build the team around. Asensio and Isco are Real's best offensive players now. Bale has started this season poorly, apart from a tap in, he's done very little during the games, doesn't work hard enough without the ball, and strolls around and makes the odd run when Real have the ball.
Is he worth more than 40m now? His marketability came from his lightening football and the hype around him at the time. Now he's declined and has zero hype he can't be worth that much?
On the topic of Bale in CL finals, wasn't he poor in the 2016 final too?
I vaguely remember him and Ronaldo competing to see who could do the least amount of running without getting subbed.
I vaguely remember him and Ronaldo competing to see who could do the least amount of running without getting subbed.
Funny how people are going on about his touch and link up and so on when the main reason for the boo's was his finishing, something that's supposed to be one of his biggest strengths. On another day he would've scored a hat-trick and the debate would've been whether Benzema comes straight back into the team when he's back.
Real fans are more fickle than guy on here! Last year they actually booed Ronaldo at times. Pathetic. How is that meant to help your team?
Yes he was. Di Maria's final performance glossed over what was a pretty inconsistent season. Of course we fell for it and bought him.
I continue to believe that had we not lost to Lester in that game when Di Maria score a beauty, he would have gone on to prove himself. It may sound weak, but to my mind that deflated him completely and he let it get to him. All down to one of the worst bits of referring in recent memory
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IIRC he was by far the best out of BBC, at least he provided the assist (even though it looked offside) and looked lively. The whole game was labored, Carrasco provided the spark at half time but apart from him it was a lot closer to a mid-table game than a CL final. I'm guessing the stress of another derby CL final got to them.
No, he was one of the best players on the pitch in milan
What, no. Read my previous posts on it. Di Maria was spectacular in the second half of the season, but he was pretty good in the first half of the season too. People actually remember a couple bad games he had to say he was inconsistent. He wasn't. He was clearly our second best player