Gareth Bale once had the option to move to a dominant side of Manchester United in the early stages of his career, but the Welsh Talisman finally rejected the great Sir Alex Fergus
Gareth Bale looked up with a smile while his old club Tottenham Hotspur lifted their first trophy in 17 years after beating Manchester United. But the story of the Welshman could have been very different if he had not rejected the chance to join the Red Devils on the side of North Londs.
Almost two decades ago, a young bale seized full-back, scored five goals and assisted 12 times over 45 performances for the then champion side Southampton. New Spurs -chairman Daniel Levy was interested, but he was confronted with fierce competition from Premier League giant Sir Alex Ferguson and his management room of Manchester United.
Bale, however, decided to reject Ferguson and, instead, to go to North Londs in 2007, and told his AirWayz channel in 2023 that this decision actually led to his success instead of any possible downfall.
The 35-year-old said: “I rejected Manchester United and went to Tottenham. At that time United was the largest team in the competition, they won trophies, they had the greatest players, the best manager.
“The easiest decision would be to go to Man United and the biggest club. You always want to be at the biggest clubs, but I followed the approach I wanted to play in the first team of football.”
But Bale raised the trend; He chose Spurs and spent six seasons hardening a switch from left back to creative Vooruit, scored 42 goals in 142 performances and impressive during his time in the Premier League.
From there, the Welshman took a sensational transfer to Spanish Giant Real Madrid in 2013 for a record compensation of £ 85 million. He joined superstars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Angel di Maria, Karim Benzema, Sergio Ramos, Casemiro and Luka Modric in the famous white kit, and spent nine seasons with the club.
During this time, Bale scored 106 goals in 258 performances and won five champion competitions, three La Liga titles and a large number of other awards. The attacker put on loan a season back to Spurs, before he came to Los Angeles FC and retired in 2023 and one of the biggest players in both Welsh and football history.
So although many would assume that Bale would regret the decision to push Ferguson and his Red Devils – who won the Premier League title under Sir Alex in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2013 – for Spurs, the pensioned winger insisted that a need for consistent playing time was more important for him than money and glory.
He added: “At that age many players would go for the money and they would like to go to a larger club.
“But I was playing, developing and learning. It was an important part of my development to keep playing the first team of football because you cannot replicate that.”
Now it seems that Bale will have the last smile for the team that could have been but not, because he made a cunning joke at the expense of United after their harmful European defeat this week.
During the TNT Sport broadcast '1-0 Europa League Final Win, Bale was asked whether this victory has lost the tagline' Spursy 'that the club is serial losers.
He responded quickly to the misery of United, as he said, “It can now be a united thing, I tell you. But it now certainly removes that stigma, and hopefully we can build on it.”