Tottenham Hotspur are currently off until Sunday April 4, when they’ll resume their Premier League campaign with a fixture at Newcastle United. In the meantime, we’ve got some transfer talk to do, so let’s get it started with the latest update from Gareth Bale.
A week ago today the Welshman winger opened up about his club future, saying the plan is to go back to Real Madrid at the end of the season, and that the prrimary focus of coming back to Spurs on loan was to get regular first team football again.
Bale said he had focused on getting fit and having regular playing time so that he’ll be in tip top shape for the Euro this summer. His comments, made on an extremely slow news day in the world of football/soccer, got spun and misinterpretted.
Thus Bale felt the need to speak again, with more elaboration, about his club future.
“I think for me, first and foremost I still have this season, and I still have plenty of games to go for the Euros,” Bale said this time.
“Obviously, going into next season, legally my contract says I have to go back to Real Madrid, which is what I stated, which I don’t think is being disrespectful to anybody. That’s legally what I have to do. Real Madrid are, I guess, my parent club and as far as I agreed I was with Tottenham on loan until the end of the season and I go back.
“That’s the plan so far.”
“The reason I left was because I wanted to play games and get match fit and enjoy my football. Obviously come the summer I will go back to Real Madrid and we’ll go from there. I think the plan is to go back and then whether then I sit down with my agent and decide is something we’ll do in the summer.
“Of course I want to be playing but other things might get in the way, which of course in football is not just about what you want it is about the other side.”
Shorter version of the Gareth Bale commentary could be interpetted like this. Last week he made it sound like he really wants to go back to Real Madrid. This time he made it sound like he has to, but probably doesn’t want to. There’s a big difference, but this could have been made clearer in the way it was articulated.
So if Bale does leave Tottenham again, who will provide the needed reinforcements in the final third?
Maybe RB Leipzig team captain, Marcel Sabitzer, says a report in Bild. There would of course be strong competition for his services, with Liverpool and Manchester United, among others, said to be interested. The 27-year-old Austrian is said to be rated to the tune of €40 million.
Leipzig is an outfit that is like some of their brethren in the Red Bull ownership group- a great developer of talent and productive selling club.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.