The day Gareth Bale became a superstar at Tottenham Hotspur

Now that he is back at Tottenham Hotspur, we need to talk about the day in which Gareth Bale became a superstar with the North London side.

You may not believe it, but Gareth Bale wasn’t always the superstar he is today at Tottenham Hotspur. In fact, he wasn’t even an offensive player when he started playing at Southampton before moving to the Spurs. The Welshman was a defensive left-back with top speed and an incredible future ahead of him.

But he was always thirsty for more glory than the one he was getting as a defensive player. Gareth started getting new ideas on how to play this newly-found role under Ben Toshack. The man who coached him on the Wales National Team. However, the one who started giving him more opportunities with his club was Andre Villas-Boas.

The Portuguese manager coached the Spurs when Bale became the player he is today. He was the one who decided to give him a chance as a winger and Gareth never looked back from there. We can pinpoint exactly when the Wales international became a real superstar.

Bale’s decision to take a stand.

This key moment in Gareth Bale’s history came during the 2012-13 campaign with Tottenham Hotspur. Andre Villas-Boas saw how important changing his position was for the player and he made the final call. Despite having already won the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award as a left-back.

Bale still wanted more than what he was getting. That’s exactly when Real Madrid started making inquiries about him and the reason he left in the summer of 2013. Villas-Boas spoke to Copa90 about the exact moment this shift happened for the player.

“Gareth wasn’t feeling that he was unlocking his full potential, he came into my office one day and said: ‘Boss, I’m not happy, things are not going well for me’,” Villas-Boas recalled to Copa90.

“I agreed and said, ‘I can try and change to a 4-4-2 formation and you can play free at the top with [Emmanuel] Adebayor and I can move [Gylfi] Sigurdsson to the left, cutting in’.

“This is when Gareth starts on that run of games where he scored, I think for five or six games in a row, and then the results exploded, and his career exploded from that moment on.”