Cardiff City miss out as Gareth Bale makes the pragmatic choice for next season

Cardiff City had been holding out hope that Gareth Bale might return to his hometown, but he opted for Los Angeles instead.

In the end, he made the pragmatic choice rather than the romantic one.

Gareth Bale choosing to see out next season with Cardiff City would have had an exceptional emotional pull, not least in the year that the national football team reached its first World Cup finals since 1958 and in the stadium which became so central to Wales’s qualification. But there are coherent reasons why Bale might be better off in California than in Glamorganshire next season, especially if those World Cup finals are his primary focus for the second half of 2022.

Bale is a lavishly talented footballer and possessor of a left foot with alchemic properties, but he is also injury-prone and therefore delicate. The English leagues already have a not-undeserved reputation for rough and tumble, and a division down from the elite, in the Championship, there is also a more punishing schedule of 46 league matches. It requires a lot of travel and a tighter schedule, and that will impact upon a player whether he’s playing in the first team or not. The Championship has nine rounds of midweek league fixtures – plus whatever may come up in the Carabao Cup – before teams break up for the World Cup finals in November. It’s not difficult to imagine Bale taking a look at a schedule like that, pursing his lips, and exhaling.

On top of that, it is commonly accepted these days that players need ‘game time’ in order to guarantee selection and/or peak performance in a major tournament. Coaches are less likely to pick a player who hasn’t been playing fairly regular league football because they’re less likely to be match fit. And even though this