Bale’s move to Real Madrid in 2013 broke football’s transfer record and he says the Spanish giants were aware of the issue.<\/p>\n
He called the problem “manageable” but said it hung over his time in La Liga, where he played a key role in the club’s return to European dominance.<\/p>\n
He says he was even forced to brush his teeth while standing on his heels because of the risk of injury to his calf.<\/p>\n
“I never knew when it would come,” he said, “and obviously people were like, ‘oh, he doesn’t look after himself’ [but] I would literally make sure my calves and soleus were bulletproof.<\/p>\n
“But again, if it misfires and it goes, there’s nothing I could do about it. I’d have an injection in my back to calm it all down.”<\/p>\n
Arguably Wales’ greatest footballer, Bale broke records for appearances and goals for the men’s national side having made his debut as a 16-year-old.<\/p>\n
He was talismanic as Wales reached the semi-finals of Euro 2016 and also helped them reach the last 16 of Euro 2020 before scoring the goal against Ukraine that booked a place in the country’s first World Cup in 64 years.<\/p>\n
“I always got to a point where I guess a lot of people do in their career, do you keep going for what reason? What else do I want to achieve?” said Bale, who retired with 111 Wales appearances and 41 goals, having also played in MLS with LAFC.<\/p>\n
“I felt like I achieved everything I wanted to. The last thing I did was qualify for a World Cup, which was the one thing that was last on my list.<\/p>\n
“I felt it was the right time. It was a few years prior that I was probably ready but it just caught up with me.”<\/p>\n
Bale also said a family illness was a factor in retiring and added he had considered post-retirement plans for several years before announcing in January 2023 he was hanging up his boots.<\/p>\n
That has included an interest in club ownership, with Bale forming part of a consortium that showed an interest in buying hometown club Cardiff City last summer.<\/p>\n
Cardiff did not give serious consideration to the proposal that Bale admits “didn’t materialise” but he says ownership remains an ambition.<\/p>\n
“I always said when I retired, I wanted one, two, three years just to decompress, enjoy the kids and then try and find a few paths I want to do,” he added.<\/p>\n
“Something like that interests me more than… going into management. I feel like I’ve done that as a player and you’ve got to put even more hours in as a coach and a manager.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bale’s move to Real Madrid in 2013 broke football’s transfer record and he says the Spanish giants were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-459252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}