Thursday, December 29, 2011

Gareth Bale - best winger in the world?

After struggling to get any playing time in his first years as a Spurs player, Bale quickly emerged as one of the key players in the squad known for his powerful runs down the left flank. Major breakthrough for Bale came when Assou-Ekotto got injured, so Harry had to use Bale as a left back. It was quickly becoming obvious that Bale's biggest qualities are mostly attacking ones. He was soon deployed to the left midfielder position with Modric moving to the inside.

He enjoyed great partnership with Modric, who supplied him with balls down the flank as Bale would beat all the right backs in front of him to assist Crouch mostly with his sharp low balls. Most notable performances are surely two games against, then, European and Italian champions, Inter, where Bale scored a hat-trick in the first game at Milan with Tottenham playing with just 10 players on the pitch. Even though he scored 3 goals, his game of career came when Inter came to London. It was then when the whole world heard of this rampaging Welshman who destroyed the worlds best full back Maicon. Simply destroyed him. Spurs won the game 3:1, mostly thanks to Bale's brilliance and they went on as group winners.

Form then dropped suddenly and everyone quickly became critical of Bale, claiming the Welshman just had his day against Inter, and had no real quality whatsoever. Whole Tottenham team played the second part of season badly, which resulted in missing out of Champions League this season and getting knocked out of CL by Real Madrid trashing us 4:0.

But this season, whole team started playing well, getting the best start in 50 years. Star of the season by many so far would be Parker, someone would even say Modric, but in my opinion, Bale was vital for all of the success. He has been superb, creating chances and scoring goals. Last term, he seemed like a player with only one dribble, where he knocks the ball past opponents and just runs past them. Worked most of the time, but it was very predictable. So predictable that Phil Jones, arguably one of the slowest fullbacks in EPL managed to stop him throughout the game. Now Bale looks like a world class player that is always able to find a solution. He's a great dribbler, his physical qualities are as good as ever, and he seems mentally stronger. All in all, improvement is quite obvious and there is no doubt that every team in this world would love to have him in his squad. So far he remains loyal to Spurs, lets just hope that remains the case.

4 comments:

  1. Fans only love you when your winning...have off games its over.

    ReplyDelete
  2. he's a good 'baller just needs to keep his head in the game

    ReplyDelete
  3. liking the site young harry

    ReplyDelete