Gareth Bale Can Now Take the Baton from Ronaldo and Secure Real Madrid Legacy

He said this wasn't him at full tilt, but those trying to catch him might have felt otherwise. With the ball still a couple of touches and a pass away, Gareth Bale set off into the space in front. Hitting the halfway line, two Espanyol players were level with him and three more were ahead; seconds later, he was receiving the ball and beyond them all, thrashing it into the net to announce himself Marshall Mathers style. 

"I was trying to be clever coming back," Bale said of his return from injury in Real Madrid's 2-0 win over Espanyol, per the Guardian. "You don't want to go 100 per cent into a sprint and pull a hamstring. It's just about getting back to match pace."

One can only imagine the sort of confidence and conviction an athlete carries when he knows he's got most of the field covered even when still leaving a bit in the tank. If Bale is still working his way back toward match pace, then more than a few defenders have got a problem when he gets there. 

That evening in the press room at the Santiago Bernabeu, there was a telling line from manager Zinedine Zidane. The Frenchman was careful not to step on any toes, mindful of the need to be diplomatic. But even with only nine words, he was still able to say it all. "Gareth is Gareth," Zidane said. "We've only got one Gareth Bale."

On paper, those words might strike as so obvious to the point of being moronic, but they're not. Of course, there's only ever been one Bale, and yet for a while, for style and effect, there'd been two. Not anymore. "He's a special player," Zidane added. "He's different from the rest."

Four years ago when Bale signed at Madrid, that wasn't true. Back then, the Welshman was a sort of next-best-thing to Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portuguese was clearly superior, but as a type they were largely the same thing, footballer meets stormtrooper. 

Four years on, though, everything is different. As Ronaldo's game has grown more narrow and specific with age, Bale's has grown more broad. In the last 18 months, he's played on the right, the left and down the middle; he's led the line, operated in a front two and a front three, occupied the No. 10 spot and even started from a wide-midfield berth when necessary. 

No one now can provide what it is that Bale gives a team. That doesn't just apply at Real Madrid but all of Spain, and maybe even Europe.

Madrid's attack with the Welshman in it is different: The threat from distance is heightened, the aerial power gets ramped up and the speed on the break is transformed, as Espanyol will attest to. Perhaps more than anything, though, is that Bale's presence changes the way opposition teams attack themselves. Fewer numbers can be committed forward due to the destruction he causes in space going the other way. 

Now he's back, and opportunity looms. "Every cloud has a silver lining; hopefully I am a bit fresher than maybe some others," he said of his injury layoff. "It can work in my advantage."

For Madrid, it matters that he can make it such. Since the turn of the year, there's been a sense of the club's season slowing just fractionally, breaking from its unrelenting charge in 2016. First, it was Sevilla who snapped their 40-game unbeaten run, Celta Vigo then dumped them out of the Copa del Rey and Valencia toppled them on Wednesday at Mestalla, blowing the league title race wide open again.  

Madrid have seen how all this can unfold. It was only two seasons ago that the men from the Bernabeu fell apart in the campaign's second half after a storming run to end 2014. Winning takes a toll, and evidently so does the Club World Cup. Since January, Madrid have looked like a team in need of a second wind. Bale can give it to them. 

Fresher than them all, with fewer miles on the clock, the Welshman is staring at the opportunity to lead a historic surge.

Rewind 10 months to when he was throwing a depleted Madrid on his back and hauling them to the season's final day when everything was remarkably still on the line. What if he were to do that again? What if he were to take them one step further this time to a double? What if he were to do it while putting together one of those defining personal barrages, propelling Madrid while on a 20-in-20 tear? 

If he did, that would mean a first league title for Madrid since 2012, for which his return would stand as the defining moment. It would mean three European Cups in four years—a streak second only to Madrid's in the 1950s. It would mean back-to-back Champions Leagues—something no one's ever done. Bale could stand central to all of it, a legacy cemented. 

Of course, you could argue his legacy already is. His CV at the Bernabeu already reads two Champions Leagues, two UEFA Super Cups, two Club World Cups and one Copa del Rey. It also contains that goal in Lisbon and that goal at Mestalla—the former one of the most important in the club's history, the latter one for the ages in a Clasico cup final. 

Still, though, there's a feeling that Bale's time in the Spanish capital remains somewhat unfulfilled. What he's done when dressed in white can't be disputed; the problem is how often he's been wearing other attire instead. 

All four of the Welshman's seasons at Madrid have been disrupted by injury, often at the worst time. His debut campaign saw a false start because of niggling issues, and they've never let up. In his second season, injury arrived just as Madrid got rolling; in his third, it arrived just as Zidane's revolution did; in his fourth, it struck just as he was taking off personally. 

Look at the numbers and you're left with plenty of what-ifs. Bale started only 24 of 38 league games in his first season, 30 in his second, just 21 in his third and only 11 of 22 this term. Every time he's looked poised to take the baton from Ronaldo, he's broken down, left to start again and held back from the sort of surge that would cement his legacy among the finest there's been in Chamartin. 

Now he's back, again. Opportunity awaits.