The rumors keep on swirling. Gareth Bale wants to go to Real Madrid. Real wants Gareth Bale. Tottenham wants 100 million british pounds. Will Real pay up?
Gareth Bale is a 24-year old soccer player from Wales who plays for Tottenham Hotspur of the English Premier League. He does things like what you see to the right - and sprinkled throughout the page - with unbelievable regularity. It is for this reason that Real Madrid, the richest, most-successful and high-profile club in the world, does not want Gareth Bale to play for Tottenham Hotspur. They want Gareth Bale to play for Real Madrid. And they are trying to pay Tottenham an awful lot of money for Bale's services. Tottenham does not want to accept this money. And hence we have quite the drama.
Tottenham are a good team, with the likes of Jermaine Defoe and speedster Aaron Lennon and American star Clint Dempsey to accompany Bale, who has been wildly successful with them - at least individually. But as a team, Tottenham have been good-not-great. They finished fifth in the 20-team Premier League last year. They failed to qualify for the UEFA Champions League, the prestigious tournament that brings the best teams from each league in Europe into one competition. This year they will probably be better, especially with the continued emergence of Bale into one of the five-best players in the world.
But here's the problem: Gareth Bale is one of the five-best players in the world.
In fact, that's might be an understatement. Some would claim that Gareth Bale is the third-best player in the world, after Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. So that is rather impressive. Bale won pretty much every award there is in the Premier League last year, including what is essentially MVP.
But let's go on the assumption that Bale is only the fifth-best player in the world. Well the world's fifth best-player does not want to play for the fifth-best team in his own league. And there are many, many teams who would pay a pretty penny for Bale's services.
Naturally, one of those teams is soccer goliath behemoth Real Madrid, unquestionably the most successful team in Europe with a record 32 league titles and nine Champions League titles. Real Madrid has paid for the top two, three of the top four and four of the top six transfer fees in history. They just offered Tottenham €100 million ($133 million) for Bale, eclipsing the €93 million $123) record for Cristiano Ronaldo that Real paid to English club Manchester United in 2009.
Tottenham said no.
You see, Tottenham wants 100 million British Pounds for Bale, because they are British and that's how they roll. That's €116 million and $154 million. Real countered with €59 million ($73 million) and Ángel di María and Fábio Coentrão, a pair of bona-fide stars, although not bona-fide superstars like Bale. That's probably the rough equivalent of Tottenham's asking price. But nope, Spurs want the cash.
Real Madrid is more than capable of ponying up whatever sort of ludicrous number Tottenham demands, and they probably will. When Real Madrid wants their man they tend to get him (Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Zidane, Figo, Benzema, Xavi Alonso, Luka Modrić, David-freaking-Beckham) by making offers that simply cannot be refused. And this is really no exception: $150 million is more than Gareth Bale is worth.
But the Tottenham is suffering from uncontrollable pride. "Gareth Bale is under contract for at least two more seasons! Why let him go now?" Also, Spurs brass has been babbling about how Bale is "too young to go abroad" and they are doing him a favor by refusing to sell him, despite Bale strongly hinting he wants to play for Real.
They might have to wait until the January transfer window, but that potential $150 million from selling Bale would make Tottenham immediate players, financially-speaking, in Europe, and they could probably more than recoup the loss in talent. Spurs have already signed Brazilian midfielder Paulinho and are very close to getting Roberto Soldado from Valencia in Spain. Both would take a lot of pressure off of Bale, while still allowing him to remain the go-to guy.
But with $150 million, Tottenham could get four Soldados and Gonzalo Higuain. Hell, they could probably nab Neymar from Barcelona. It really is an offer that can't be refused.
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