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Why Bale Makes Us Dream

4 min read
by Conner Green
Gareth Bale has something many players at Spurs don’t have and that’s a fairytale in them...

Ah, Gareth Bale, the return of the prodigal son, the return of the top-knotted super-hero, the man who simultaneously manages to have the body of a Greek god whilst having the accent of an extra from Gavin and Stacey.

The man who actually came back., Modric hasn’t come back. Berbatov never came back. A shadow of Robbie Keane came back but Bale actually came back. He said he might years ago but it always seemed fanciful, a dream, something to generate clicks every transfer window but he actually did it! He came back ‘home’ well. We’ll not really his home, more of a uni house where we both had loads of fun and created some great memories. But the fact we’re not really his home might be of benefit to both Bale and us.

Before examining why Bale isn’t really Spurs through and through, we need to look at a man who is; Harry Kane. There’s nothing much to be said about Kane that hasn’t already been said, he’s elite, he’s sensible, he’s arguably the best striker in the world right now and most importantly, he’s ours. Harry Kane loves Tottenham, Tottenham loves Harry Kane. It genuinely seems to be a match made in heaven. He’s almost like a striker from the 1950s who’s somehow found himself in the era of sponsored Instagram posts and holidays to Dubai.

Harry Kane gets what it’s like to be Spurs. Spurs runs through his veins. He remembers when we were mind-numbingly average. He remembers lasagna-gate, he remembers it all And this is where there could be a problem.

Kane’s commitment and love of Spurs can never be questioned, but maybe in being so Spurs, Kane has not under-achieved but perhaps suffered from the same issues our club has in recent history. It’s not in the sense that he hasn’t worked extremely hard to get where he is or that what he hasn’t done is very impressive. But when it has come to the big stage, the final step, things have come crashing down.

It’s not even Harry’s fault, that seemingly innocuous ankle injury that led to our whole fanbase questioning “what if?” after the Champions League final. It’s not that Kane doesn’t work as hard as he possibly can, it’s just that it’s still Spurs.

This is the complete opposite of the experience of Gareth Bale. Even when not going through the best spell in his career, Bale managed to make something out of nothing. When Gareth Bale scored an overhead kick against Liverpool in the Champions League final he’d only scored one goal in the whole competition in the lead up to the moment. He only scored three in the Champions League that season but two of them came in the final.

Gareth Bale has something many players at Spurs don’t have and that’s a fairytale in them; Bale is a bit like Tottenham’s very own Rocky Balboa, an aging athlete with a point to prove and what seems like genuine luck on their side. This is why it’s so easy to get behind Bale, why he makes us believe. Not only has he been there and done it he seems to have a genuine mystique about him, something that no one else at the club has.

Harry Kane has without a doubt done more than anyone else associated with Tottenham to take us to where we are today. No one deserves the winner in a cup final more than Kane but with Kane it has always felt like everything needed to fall into place, for everyone to be on their A-game, playing at one-hundred-percent. But for Gareth Bale it just seems to happen.

Gareth Bale coming back to Spurs was something that was always discussed but all rumours were taken with a pinch of salt. As the years went on it seemed less and less likely. Tottenham were going in their own direction and Bale seemed content to collect a cheque whilst playing golf in sunny Madrid. Then, Daniel Levy, the man who has spent his entire time at Tottenham acting only in a way that made financial sense took a nostalgia-led gamble on an aging player with a wage bill that would make Man City’s owners blush.

It seemed at first like this was just another expensive flop; “at least we tried” “it could have been great” we’d all say in years to come but this isn’t what happens to Gareth Bale. Slowly but surely with a grin and armed with a new celebration things have gone from strength to strength for Gareth Bale and it seems that a fairytale is genuinely happening at Spurs.

All views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Fighting Cock. We offer a platform for fans to commit their views to text and voice their thoughts. Football is a passionate game and as long as the views stay within the parameters of what is acceptable, we encourage people to write, get involved and share their thoughts on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.

Conner Green

Regular contributor at Never Mind The B*llocks

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