Gareth Bale may have overstayed his welcome in Madrid. The Welsh star who heroically scored for Los Blancos in the European Cup final and Spanish Cup final in the same season last year was attacked by fans as he drove away from the team’s training center on Monday morning.
A couple of angry and outraged fans screamed “Hijo de puta!” (Son of a bitch!), while kicking and punching Bale’s white Bentley convertible as it drove away. Bale has become the scapegoat for Real Madrid’s recent troubles. Bale has tinkered off slightly this season from last season’s pace, but the drop off is hardly as drastic as people think.
Through 28 games in 2013-2014, Bale had scored 15 goals with 12 assists. He averaged 0.55 goals per game and about five shots per goal. This season (2014-2015), Bale has scored 12 goals with five assists and an average of 0.48 goals per game and six shots per every goal.
The decline in offensive productivity is to be expected after the summer addition of James Rodriguez, the ball dominating presence that is Cristiano Ronaldo, and the extra minutes Bale has had to play based on injuries to key figures like Rodriguez, Luka Modric and Sergio Ramos.
Even with the wave of injuries that has struck the team recently, Real Madrid still stands in second place in the La Liga table, and have reached the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League where they look to repeat as title holders. Nonetheless, the Spanish fans and media are still calling for Bale to be dropped by the team. According to a recent ESPN poll, nearly 70 percent of those polled believe that Real Madrid should bench the Welsh forward and transfer him out of the Bernabeu this summer.
Bale has grown increasingly unpopular amongst Madrid fans and it only got worse after the El Clasico match on Sunday saw Real Madrid fall to Barcelona 2-1 and drop four points behind the Catalan club in the standings. Bale had a goal disallowed in the game that would have given Los Blancos the 2-1 lead, but he was called offsides on the play.
Bale finished the match with the worst passing accuracy on the team as only 58.6 percent of his passes found their target. In the second half, that number was 47.6 percent. He turned the ball over 17 times and never crossed over into Barcelona territory after the 46th minute of play.
Real Madrid announced that they will take legal action in finding the individuals responsible for the attack and added that they had already identified the responsible parties. However, if Real Madrid fans discontent with Bale has grown so sizable that it has produced violent attacks on players, perhaps its time for Bale to return to England and play for a team like Manchester United.
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