Just as Gareth Bale could retreat from Real Madrid, he is on course to advance with Wales.
Club and country offer contrasting experiences for the Cardiff Galactico. Six days after Madrid lost their most significant away game of the season, at Barcelona, Wales recorded their most momentous win on the road for years.
They leapfrogged Israel with a 3-0 win last night in Group B of European Championship qualifying and positioned themselves to qualify for Euro 2016. Their 57-year wait to appear in a major tournament may be nearing an end.
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Bale provided the highlights in Haifa, as one assist and two goals brought three points in Israel. His destructive, dominant display offered welcome respite from the maelstrom in Madrid.
Whether or not the world’s most expensive player is resigning himself for the taste of rejection by Madrid that Mesut Ozil and Angel Di Maria experienced in the last two summers, he need not worry about having his car vandalised this week. Wales supporters do not castigate him. They celebrate him.
The context is very different. Madrid are a perennial superpower, Wales forever on the outside looking in. Cristiano Ronaldo tops the billing at the Bernabeu. Bale’s status as Wales’ top gun goes unquestioned.
Yet colleagues and, some suggest, rivals, have certain similarities. A greater physicality was part of Bale’s Ronaldo-esque transformation from promising youngster to powerful match-winner.
Like his Madrid teammate, aerial ability is one of his attributes. Bale served as a target man for Wales’ opening goal. Israel committed the mistake of letting Wayne Hennessey’s 80-yard goal kick bounce through to Bale, who headed it back for Aaron Ramsey to loop the ball over goalkeeper Ofir Martziano.
If it was a route-one goal, Bale can be a thrillingly direct player. Wales’ second goal provided ample evidence. A high-speed dart towards the penalty box was halted illegally by Eitan Tibi. Bale himself dispatched the resulting free kick past a motionless Martziano.
Tibi’s inability to handle Bale was illustrated when the overmatched defender chopped him down again, collected a second caution and duly departed.
They were not his only errors: if Wales’ game plan was to give the ball to Bale, it posed problems for Israel when Tibi twice adopted the same approach.
Ramsey, too, was quick to look for Bale and their understanding produced the third goal, finished with the latter’s favoured left foot.
Before the game, Israel manager Eli Guttman had joked he had contacted Ronaldo about how to stop Bale, but the Portuguese had not answered his call.
It was a nice line, but the reality was that Israel seemed to have few ideas how to cope with him. Wales’ tactics helped. Chris Coleman configured his side in a 3-5-1-1 formation, in effect giving Bale a free role behind striker Hal Robson-Kanu.
He used his roving role to roam with intent and incision.
Briefly, it entailed a return to the left flank. The most vicious of crosses gave James Collins an open goal and the West Ham United man, betraying his day job as a centre-back, contrived to get the ball stuck under his feet. An embarrassing miss then became a mere footnote, courtesy of Bale’s brilliance.
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