Real Madrid forward Gareth Bale is not happy with the fans of the club who he said their continuous booing is not helping his confidence whenever he is playing for the club. He said fans are supposed to encourage their players during a match, not helping to even make them feel worse.
Bale has been magnificent for Real Madrid since he joined the club for a then world-record transfer fee of about €100.8 million from Tottenham Hotspur in 2013. He broke the transfer record which was previously held by Cristiano Ronaldo. The record has since been broken by a number of transfers.
But that is not his problem. His problem has been that he is constantly subjected to booing by Real Madrid fans especially when he is having a bad game or not banging in the goals.
This trend of Madrid fans always booing him while playing became worse when he and his fellow Wales team-mates celebrated their qualifications for the 2020 Euros by standing behind a banner with an inscription which says “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In That Order”. This was interpreted to mean that playing golf was more important than playing for Madrid.
“We get a lot of pressure every game. If you don’t play well, there’s scrutiny,” Bale told US golf podcast The Eric Anders Lang Show. “I’ve had 80,000 people in a stadium whistle at me because I haven’t played well. I’ve had it a few times! It’s not nice and it doesn’t do your confidence any good either.
“You would expect that if you’re not having a good time on the pitch, your fans would get behind you and try to help you do better because it’ll make them happy. But it seems that they do the opposite. They whistle you, which consequentially makes you feel worse, you lose your confidence, you play worse and then that makes them even more upset.
“In football, you might play amazing, not score for five games, and then everyone says you’re having a terrible time. You think to yourself that you’re playing well, you just haven’t scored or assisted. But people just like goals, assists and ‘wow’ things. Sometimes that doesn’t always happen.”
Bale added that his love for golf has not taken away anything from his ability to play on the pitch. He stressed that he doesn’t know why Madrid‘s fans have issues with him playing golf days before a match.
“A lot of people have problems with me playing golf,” he said. “I don’t know what their reason is that I’ve spoken to doctors and everybody’s fine with it. The media has this perception that it’s not good for me, you should be resting, it can cause you injuries.
“It’s nice to be on the course and just get away from everything. “I play with a few friends or sometimes play on my own, put some music on, play 18 holes and just relax and get away from everything. I then don’t have to think about football, especially if it’s not going well.”
Playing golf or having bad days on the field of play might not be the only reasons why the fans always boo him. It might be because Bale has been seen a couple of times flaunting his love for golf scornfully. Besides doing this when his national team qualified for the Euros in November 2019, he has been seen doing such a thing during training in Madrid.
