The words of Gareth Bale’s agent in 2015 read a little differently now. Last September, Jonathan Barnett talked about the financial sacrifices his client had made when he decided to play for Wales, not England.
“He could have qualified through his grandmother and I tell you that it has cost him millions and millions of pounds. You can imagine what it would have been like if he were playing for England next summer in the Euros… but he does love playing for Wales.”
Today, it is easy to imagine what it would have been like if Gareth Bale had been playing for England. Maybe Bale would have made a difference or maybe he would have been one of those players condemned for grinning, smirking or even uttering a pithy one-liner in the aftermath of the defeat to Iceland.
Maybe Bale would have been pursued for failing to deliver on his talent for his adopted country, maybe his Welshness would have been held against him or maybe his hairstyle would have been held against him.
Anything is possible now in the places where England’s footballers are ridiculed for smiling once again (ever smile or crack a joke at a loved one’s funeral? Can you be sure you really loved the loved one if you did?) and condemned for being young and gifted, but not gifted enough.
For Bale and Wales, anything is possible too, but only in the way sport can somehow make the impossible seem possible.
The European Championships have demonstrated how poor the standard of football can be at that level, while also demonstrating that it doesn’t matter.
There is a joy in the achievements of Wales or Iceland that is not often present in club football, especially in the modern era.
Since he became the most expensive player in the world, Bale has won two Champions League medals with Real Madrid, but what he could achieve in the next five days with Wales would trump those achievements.
They would provide a simple pleasure, which is what Wales have already delivered, a pleasure derived from inspiring a country which can unite behind a team. If England are an example of how it can sour, Wales are a demonstration of how it can all go right.
Barnett was imagining a different Euros for Bale, a European Championships where he led England to a new kind of glory and the sponsorship deals followed.
But that England is a fantasy whereas Bale’s Wales is a reality, a fantastical and extraordinary reality, but it exists nonetheless and it could get much better if Portugal are defeated on Wednesday in the European Championship semi-final.
Naturally much of the talk before the game has focused on the clash between Ronaldo and Bale and their distant relationship at the club.
Florentino Perez may crave a future where Bale is the emblem of the club, but the player himself is more of a reluctant galactico. He is still a hesitant Spanish speaker in public, which hasn’t helped. Perez may crave world domination with Bale instead of Ronaldo, but Bale prefers to train and play and return to his life of quiet domesticity. He is closest to Luka Modric among the players, while others tend to congregate to a camp led by Sergio Ramos, or around Ronaldo himself.
Ultimately everything at Madrid takes place in the shadow of Ronaldo, even as his influence on the field diminishes. “He can get you, me and the chief executive sacked,” Perez warned Rafa Benitez during his brief time at the club, when he failed to heed those warnings.
Benitez couldn’t play the game, which made him a strange choice as manager. When asked if Ronaldo was the best player in the world, he replied “one of the best”, an answer which was typical of the stubborn egalitarianism of Benitez, but politically as damaging as if a US presidential candidate was asked his views on the country being the greatest on earth and demurring slightly to say he certainly considered it to be among the greatest.
Ronaldo needs constant reassurance about his own magnificence, so Benitez’s approach was never going to work. Bale, on the other hand, enjoyed working with Benitez, in part because of this principle. Bale has an ego, but his is more straightforward than Ronaldo’s, so he warmed to the idea that the players would be treated as equals. Unfortunately it meant that Benitez wouldn’t last long.
Bale was upset at his dismissal, reportedly texting Perez and the chief executive to express his disappointment. The season however ended well with another European Cup, but all that Wales are doing might eclipse that.
And the simplicity might appeal to Bale as well. Everybody understands why Wales have built their team around their one great player, but Bale also appreciates the efforts made by those who willingly cover the ground for him as well.
As they have shown in the games against Russia and Belgium in particular, Wales have a system which allows them to dominate through more than one player. They will have to do so without Aaron Ramsey on Wednesday night, but if the abstracts they deal in stand for anything then they can overcome the loss of one player.
Well, they could overcome the loss of nearly any player. Bale is key to all that they do, a player of brilliance enjoying the most unexpected of summers.
Certainly it has taken his team-mates at Real Madrid by surprise, but maybe not Bale. He may never have days like these again, no matter where his talent takes him, no matter what he achieves in a career which is already extraordinary.
He may never have days where it seems so straightforward, where there was so much joy and goodwill.
On Tuesday, a Uefa official asked players not to bring their children onto the pitch after matches. Following the Belgium game, a number of Wales players had a kickabout with their children in front of the Welsh supporters and this was causing some alarm.
“It is a European Championship, not a family party,” a Uefa official said, with logic on his side. But Wales have something else on their side. They have something Bale might have imagined when others saw a different future for him, a future with less joy and with fewer opportunities to create memories which will never fade.
