Gareth Bale
Gareth Bale will still be at Real Madrid after the transfer window closes unless the Spanish club pay up his contract.
There have been suggestions since Real Madrid returned to training that the club have agreed to pay half the player’s salary if he goes out on loan or allow him to leave on the cheap.
But there has been no contact between player and club and neither proposal will succeed in moving Bale on.
Bale earns £15.2m-net-a-season (around £30m gross) and has two years on his current deal. That means Madrid would need to find around £60m if they are to shift the Wales international.
Ill feeling that still lingers from a U-turn performed by the club last year over allowing him to move to the Chinese Super League has been influential in the lack of any leeway in the player’s position.
The club currently cannot afford the pay-out so they are resigned to keeping one of their top earners into the penultimate season of the huge deal he signed in 2016.
As of yesterday morning, Bale had still not been reunited with coach Zinedine Zidane, meaning their last contact remains the brief chat ahead of the last-16 Champions League second leg against Manchester City when Bale told the coach that—knowing he would be playing no part—he preferred not to travel.
The no-show in Manchester and the fact that Bale returned to Madrid after international duty with a slight knock and trained in the gym—along with several players returning from international duty—has further riled the player’s critics.
Manchester United and Tottenham are both interested in the Welshman, Marca reported earlier this week, but at present an offer has yet to materialise and it is believe, as things stand, Tottenham cannot afford a move to bring Bale back to the club.