Gareth Bale has reiterated his plan to return to Real Madrid once his loan spell at Tottenham Hotspur is over and played down suggestions his comments were disrespectful to the London club.
The 31-year-old raised eyebrows last week when appearing to rule out any chance of staying with his former club Tottenham for a longer period, having returned on loan in September. Some of the club’s fans took to social media to accuse Bale of using Tottenham to get himself fit for this year’s Euros, having fallen out of favour at Real Madrid, where he has a contract until 2022.
“Obviously, going into next season, legally my contract says I have to go back to Real Madrid, which is what I stated, which I don’t think is being disrespectful to anybody. That’s legally what I have to do,” Bale said yesterday from the Wales camp ahead of today’s World Cup qualifier at home to the Czech Republic in Cardiff.
“Real Madrid are I guess my parent club and as far as I agreed I was on Tottenham on loan until the end of the season and I go back. That’s the plan so far. The reason I left is because I wanted to play games and enjoy my football. Come summer I will go back to Real Madrid and we will go from there. Then whether then I sit down with my agent and decide, that’s something I will do in the summer.”
Bale has scored 10 goals in 25 appearances in all competitions since his loan move and has recently begun to show some of his best form after struggling initially for fitness. Bale said his only priority at the moment was helping Wales in their bid for World Cup qualification and finishing the season strongly with Tottenham. Wales are looking to bounce back from defeat by Belgium in their opening qualifier last week.
“I am concentrating on this season. There’s a game tomorrow, big end of the season with Tottenham. I don’t need to worry about anything else,” he said. “After the Euros and my summer holiday I will sit down, we’ll go through it then and come to a solution.”
Bale said he would be willing to join a boycott of social media to tackle online abuse after former Arsenal and France legend Thierry Henry disabled his accounts. Henry quit social media at the weekend, saying he would stay away until platforms did more to tackle “toxic” racism and harassment.
Two of Bale’s Wales teammates, Ben Cabango and Rabbi Matondo, were racially abused on Instagram following Saturday’s 1-0 friendly win over Mexico — the latest footballers to be attacked online. Matondo criticised Instagram for not reacting quickly enough, saying if he had posted images of the match they would have been removed. Facebook, which owns Instagram, later removed a number of accounts that were used for the racial abuse.
Bale said only a mass boycott would have an impact. “If everyone did it at once, not just one or two people, I would,” said the 31-year-old forward. “If it was a campaign where a lot of influential people in sport and other forms of life on social media (acted) to make a statement then I think it could help. If that was the case I’m all for that.”
Henry, who had 2.3mn followers on Twitter and 2.7mn on Instagram, said that he would return to social media when it was “safe”. “People are getting racially abused but, when you see the statement (he made), I talk also about bullying, harassment that can cause mental issues, people commit suicide because of it,” said the 1998 World Cup winner.
“It’s very difficult to eradicate everything but can it be safer? We all know that it is a great tool but a lot of people are using it as a weapon. Why? Because they can hide behind fake accounts.”
Instagram took action in relation to 6.6mn elements of hate speech between October and December last year. Twitter has said it will cooperate with authorities to erase racial abuse and hate-filled posts but would stop short of banning anonymous accounts.