In the years when a footballer would never set you back £200m, the contestants in this summer’s Uefa Super Cup used to hold all the records for market extravagance. As it is, the meeting of Real Madrid and Manchester United in Tuesday’s curtain-raiser to the European club season looks quaintly old-fashioned: a pair of traditional heavyweights taking not mega-millions but mere multi-million-pounds’ worth of talent to Macedonia.
Cristiano Ronaldo, who eight years ago became the costliest player in history at less than half the price of a Neymar, is likely to be rested by the Champions League holders for their meeting with the Europa Cup winners, leaving a clear field for evaluation of the most expensive man ever to join a Premier League club, Paul Pogba; the priciest striker ever to do so, Romelu Lukaku and, more fiercely scrutinised than either, Gareth Bale. The Brit with the biggest price tag is enduring some pressure.
Bale turned 28 last month and has just been part of the most successful Real Madrid season in more than half a century — the club won the European Cup and La Liga double for the first time since the end of the 1950s — but finds himself the focus of sustained scepticism from voices in the Spanish media. The As newspaper has in recent weeks more than once outlined the coming season as make-or-break for Bale. One columnist put it bluntly: “To go limp again would be intolerable for the Bernabeu and unsustainable for the club.” If that sounds a little severe of a player who has scored 67 goals and set up another 51 in his 150 matches for Madrid, it’s because, clutching their auditors’ clipboards, the critics have it that Bale’s returns over his four years at Madrid follow a steadily declining arc.
His 2016-17 campaign was peppered with more, and longer, absences with injury, usually muscular problems, that have hampered his career in Spain. He featured in only half of the club’s league matches; he contributed just seven goals towards the domestic title.
“It was a frustrating season,” he said while on pre-season tour in the USA. The Bale showreel from 2016-17 is short. He appeared only as a substitute in the Champions League final in Cardiff, having spent the previous six weeks recovering from another calf injury. His headline moments in all-white are largely archived in the first season after his £90m-plus move from Spurs to Madrid: the solo run from the junction of touchline and halfway line to score the winning goal in a Copa del Rey final against Barcelona; the extra-time header that put Real in front in the victorious 2014 Champions League final against Atletico Madrid.
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Last week’s seismic Neymar move from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain has resonated at Madrid, whose glee at a Barça weakened by the loss of a key player is balanced by the acknowledgement that the Brazilian striker has enhanced his reputation and his market value hugely since their rivals brought him to Spain. Neymar was Barça’s capture in the same summer Bale was Madrid’s. For two seasons, their contributions ran parallel: a European Cup each, similar gestures of magnanimity towards their respective superstar colleagues, Lionel Messi and Ronaldo. Neymar’s climb up the sport’s hierarchy has taken him onto the podium for the Ballon d’Or. Bale’s has not.
Barcelona will miss Neymar. Real Madrid learnt they could compensate for a missing Bale as they seized their double with the contributions, often from the bench, of Alvaro Morata, through Ronaldo’s late-season brilliance, and with the emergence of 21-year-old Marco Asensio as a match-winner of poise and outstanding technique, with a fine left foot and especially effective in the channels Bale operates in. Morata has joined Chelsea, frustrated at his lack of starts, and, like James Rodriguez, who has gone to Bayern Munich on loan, he anticipated the probable arrival of another striker on the roster. Madrid are pursuing 18-year-old Monaco and France starlet Kylian Mbappe.
They have already brought in the 19-year-old left back Theo Hernandez at a cost of more than £20m from Atletico Madrid, a move that allows head coach Zinedine Zidane to use Marcelo, his creative left-back, in midfield if necessary, and alter the balance of his team.
Ronaldo’s grumblings about living in Spain, where he is being investigated for alleged tax irregularities, have receded, and he remains the most important player for Zidane. But Zidane approaches the defence of Madrid’s two titles concerned by a patchy pre-season tour of the USA. Madrid won none of their matches in open play and neither Karim Benzema nor Bale registered a goal.
“The situation overall is not great,” said Zidane ahead of Tuesday’s head-to-head with United’s Jose Mourinho, the Madrid manager for three seasons until 2013. “We have things to work on.” Of Bale, Zidane identified one positive. “I see him in good shape physically,” said the Madrid coach, who has been in his post for 18 months. “It’s the first time I’ve had him with me for a full pre-season. It’s not important who scores or doesn’t in pre-season games.”
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Real Madrid v Man United
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