The first time Gareth Bale scored a goal in professional football, he was a Championship left-back. The last time he did, it was his country’s first in a World Cup for 64 years. In between, he became officially the most successful British footballer ever in the European Cup or Champions League, as a five-time winner, arguably the greatest Welsh player of all time and a phenomenon. For years, he was the most famous Welsh golfer, too.
No one had a career quite like Bale. If his started out like Luke Shaw, another teenage prodigy on the left of the Southampton defence, he became the Cardiff Cristiano Ronaldo, the serial Champions League winner on the wing for Real Madrid. He helped drag Wales from 117th in the world rankings to the semi-finals of Euro 2016. He took them to a World Cup, even if he could hardly move in it. He was the curse on Tottenham, the signing who did not play in a Premier League win in his first two years at White Hart Lane but who went on to become the destroyer of defences.
