The end of an era, as Gareth hangs up his boots

A small nation in the far west of Europe is, today, mourning the end of an era.

The bleak, slate-gray weather currently encompassing Wales will more than match the national mood, as it comes to terms with the retirement of, unquestionably, its most iconic male sportsman.

Gareth Frank Bale MBE, has decided to hang up his golden boots, upon which, so often, the hopes of the nation rested — and equally often, were faithfully repaid.

His ability to find a moment or the smallest sliver of space, when it was needed the most, for club and country, has been unparalleled. Whether it was winning the Copa del Rey for Real Madrid in 2014 with one of the greatest goals of his career, single-handedly winning the club the 2018 Champions League with, arguably, the competition's greatest ever strike, or scoring the crucial goal deep into injury time, minutes after joining the fray, to send Los Angeles FC to its first MLS title — Bale always found a way to win.

"I have a knack for scoring in finals, I guess," he joked in his post-match interview after winning the title with LA.

His $132 million move to Los Blancos from Spurs in 2013 was a record. He became the most expensive British footballer ever, following in the footsteps of another Welsh great, John Charles, who was Britain's most expensive sporting export when he signed for Italian club Juventus for£65,000 ($79,100) in 1957.

He racked up 106 goals, 67 assists in 258 appearances for the club, despite injury layoffs and a very public falling out with the organization in 2019, at the start of former teammate Zinedine Zidane's tenure as manager, who refused to play Bale after the club blocked the winger's transfer to Chinese team Jiangsu Suning.

Bale came under fire from local press, which reported that he was only interested in playing golf, his other sporting passion.

While this animosity was stoked further with Bale pictured posing with a Welsh flag emblazoned with the slogan "Wales, Golf, Madrid. In that order" after qualifying for Euro 2020, it only enhanced his hero status back home.

"The dragon on my chest is all I need," he once famously told a reporter.

And for me, and 3.5 million others, it will be his heroics for Wales that will define Gareth Bale.

When you boil it down to bare stats, he boasts a Welsh men's record 111 caps and 41 international goals since making his debut against Trinidad and Tobago in 2006, at the tender age of 16, becoming, at the time, Wales' youngest ever player. Showing a glimpse of what was to come, he provided the crucial assist that enabled Robert Earnshaw to secure a 2-1 win.

But for us Gareth is more than just stats. He is a dream weaver. He is hope when there is none — a Deus ex Machina — always allowing us, the Red Wall, to believe that anything is possible. No more so than in his hat-trick performance against Belarus away in September 2021, when, with the World Cup qualification playoff on the line, and 2-1 down, he still found a way, with a penalty and a 93rd minute winner, when we thought all was lost.

His left peg has written into Welsh sporting history, legends that will be told for generations.

Without him we would not have qualified for Euro 2016, our first major tournament in 58 years, let alone charged all the way to the semifinals. It was the greatest summer of our lives.

Then, to qualify for Euro 2020 on the back of his enviable goal tally, and again, for him to be the man to deliver the winning assist to secure our spot in the knockout stages, it was evident that we, as Wales fans, were living in unprecedented times.

However, it was scaling the Everest that had eluded so many Welsh greats before him, from Toshack and Yorath, to Rush and Hughes, that will ensure his name will be forever forged in Welsh gold.

In December last year he became the first player to lead Wales onto the pitch at a World Cup in 64 long years. Eighty-two minutes later, he gratefully took away Terry Medwin's unwelcome record of being the last Welshman to score at one, by burying, with purpose, a penalty to draw us level against the USA, snatching what we hoped would be a valuable point.

It was not to be the glorious last dance we had hoped for many of Wales' "golden generation", of which Bale is the first to take the plunge into retirement.

What he leaves behind, though, transcends the soccer pitch. Through his sporting achievements, public profile, the compelling power of his down-to-earth personality and cheeky sense of humor, he has given a small nation, so often obscured in the shadow of its bigger neighbor, a global reach.

Even here in China, I'm part of an online community of Chinese soccer fans that are obsessed with Wales, in part because of him, who are also all in mourning at the moment.

It is an identity that will last, and one which, which as nation, we can build upon, economically, politically and hopefully, too, in a footballing sense.

No words can really, truly express how I feel about Gareth Bale, and it is hard to imagine a Wales team where his left boot is no longer an option when things get desperate. But I am privileged, as we all are, to have been watching soccer at a time when it was Gareth's world, and we were all just living in it.

So, all I can really say is thank you, Gareth, diolch yn fawr, and hope that maybe Wales' footballing loss might actually be the nation's golfing gain. I think he'd look rather good in a Green Jacket.