Does anyone else think that it is absolutely amazing that the, soon to be, worlds most expensive footballer was a product of the Southampton Football Club Academy?
Well, we've produced so many good young players over the years......I guess there was a pretty good chance. Thats not to take away the incredible natural technical ability that Gareth has as an individual. I'd like to see him in the premiership for another season, but it's looking less likley now. Good luck to him either way, seems like a decent lad.
Be even better if: 1. He was being transferred from Saints for a World Record Fee; 2. We had a 10-20% sell-on clause in place 3. He's just scored 20 odd goals for Saints 4. He could play for England
He was clearly talented at 17 for us, but the credit must go to him mostly. He clearly has not settled for being just a talented young player and has obviously worked hard and improved his game to a level that I wasn't sure he'd achieve. Plus, he's a quiet, good lad who isn't ****ing around or being a diva. He trains, he plays, he goes home.
Of course a lot of credit must go to him. He has always worked hard to improve. He was beyond 'clearly talented' when he played in our first team; I recall watching some games that season in disbelief that everything we did seemed to be orchestrated through our 17 year old left back.
I'm getting massively bored of this entire saga now, my last remaining positive sentiment for him disappeared along with that late winner at WHL!
Yes but we sold a promising 17 year old left back and he's now one of the best attacking midfielders in the world. It's nice he's one of our youth products but I'm not sure we can claim too much credit here.
Did you watch him play for us? It was obvious he was something very special and played more like a winger then anyway.
I think we can claim more credit than spurs. We had him for longer and during a time when most of a players development happens. He was destined to be a top player, spurs didnt have to do much to keep him on track
Mine dissapeard after he did the stupid heart celebration after scoring at SMS. He is a fantastic player though. Also I get the feeling he could play in any position, his defensive positioning is spot on, and his body looks like it's carved from marble. A fantastic talant, it will be a shame to see him leave the EPL.
What's amazing is the amount of money being talked about, not that Bale should have come from the Southampton Academy. Just look back to January 1968 when we sold a player who came to us as a schoolboy, Martin Chivers (to Spurs, funnily enough) for a fee that smashed the British transfer record. That fee was £125,000, and now, 45 years on, we are talking in terms of £86 million. Bale is a fantastic player, but I just can't get my head around the amounts of money in football these days.
True. You could say the same for Spurs though. I'm not saying we deserve no credit, but Spurs deserve a lot of credit as well. And? He was a very good player for us but he played left-back in virtually every game he played for us. He played most of his early games for Spurs at left-back. He was a left-back. Clubs do not pay £80m-plus for left-backs. Real Madrid are prepared to pay that money because he is not a left-back any more. Spurs have changed his position. They deserve credit for that. We do not. It's true that we had him for longer but the nearer you get to the top of the tree the harder it is to climb higher. We made him into a Premiership-standard left-back, Spurs (and Bale himself) have made him into one of the best attacking midfielders in the world. That is a much harder thing to do and they deserve more credit for making that change than we do.
I agree that it is harder to make those last few steps but that doesn't make tottenham's job harder or more worthy of merit. It is much harder to develop a promising kid into a potentially world class footballer than to develop a potentially world class footballer into a world class footballer. We grew bale's potential no end, tottenham realised it but so would have any other club. No footballer is just a left-back, don't let fairly meaningless labels obscure the reality that bale was an extremely talented footballer when he left southampton.
