"That's the second question on Gareth, I won't answer any more," Zinedine Zidane said. It was Friday lunchtime https://www.w88thais.com/ at Valdebebas, Real Madrid's training ground out near Barajas airport, and these questions had only just started. La Liga and club football were back, which meant that the prematch news conference was back. It also meant that Zidane was back. Above all, it meant that Gareth Bale was back, and the news conference was all about him. Well, almost. Bale and that flag. You know the one by now: "Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order."

By the way, at least Madrid are on the list of priorities. Where were his wife and kids?

The first question was about Bale. (He's in the squad this weekend to face Real Sociedad.) The second question was about Bale and despite Zidane answering that one a little pointedly, so was the third. Jose Mourinho made a brief appearance before Zidane was asked if he would only ever manage Real Madrid in Spain -- "yes, I'm white," he said -- before Bale was back again. Question six was on him; so were questions seven and eight.



It became almost a running joke. Another one. Apologies were offered before questions were asked, but no one had any intention of not asking them ww88.

Bernabeu rage over Wales flag doesn't worry Bale
"There have been six questions on Bale so far," someone opened a few minutes later. Six of eight. Make that seven. Of 10. Ah, wait. Eight. And that was just he ones that were asked: from Britain they'd come -- Valdebebas is handy from the airport at least -- but from Britain they wouldn't be heard. And nor was it just Friday.

"There have been eight questions about Bale today..." another began. Nine, now. "... Before Galatasaray, it was seven of the 13. It was 11 of 16 before Leganes," the question continued, taking it to nine of 15 here. "Is he making it too easy for us?" A lot of it has been too easy, that's for sure.

"He thinks it's too much," Zidane said. And Zidane felt the same way. There had been "a lot of noise," he said.

On one level, it's pretty silly. Bale likes golf: what a monster! As crimes go it's pretty heinous, you'll agree, and it's become an obsession, occupying far too many minds in the media, seemingly incapable of resisting teeing up the obvious punchline and taking a swing at him. See? Anyway, "Bale [gets stuck] in the hole," ran the headline of AS on Thursday.

Writing in El Pais, Rafa Cabeleira summed up the essential absurdity of some of it. "Football is so merciless that protagonists are not allowed the slightest glimmer of humanity, the tiniest slither of anything that makes them like mere mortals," he writes. "Gareth Bale knows that well: a football player who has lifted four Champions League trophies with Real Madrid and who, it seems, likes to play golf in his spare time. Guess which of those two things has become of central importance when it comes to judging him, and which is reduced to mere anecdote?"


The relationship between Gareth Bale and Real Madrid appears broken following the international break. Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Maybe it is something probably best laughed at. Bale had said that he found the "Wales, golf, Madrid" chant "hilarious"; his teammates laughed about it, he said. The flag was a joke, prompted by remarks made by former Madrid striker Predrag Mijatovic about the Welshman's supposed priorities and poking fun at a perceived media agenda against him. His teammates have long called him "The Golfer." When AS underlined a trio of concerns that Madrid supposedly had over him, they headlined it "triple bogey"; "I've never had one of them in my life," Bale joked, and in Wales they fell about. Back in Spain during training on Friday, when he messed up a pass, teammate Mariano performed a golf swing. Bale grinned and a lot of people laughed w88 mobile .

A lot of people didn't, though. The more that some don't laugh, the more their knickers get in a twist, maybe the funnier it is. It might have been blown out of proportion, and that was Zidane's line on Friday.

"It's too much already," he repeated, noting: "He just wants to play and he doesn't like the fact that we're talking about this; he thinks it's too much." Zidane also tried to suggest that this was nothing to do with him -- a thing that people were banging on about out there, not in here. "Outside, there are a lot of comments and I'm not here for that," he said. "I'm not interested, I know a lot of people are, but I'm not ... we can't control what goes on outside."

But there is more to it than that, and nor is this some extraneous issue beyond anyone's control. While it was a joke, while it is someone else's flag Bale stood behind, the visual stung. Many a true word said in jest, they say. And while it was aimed at the press, it would be naive not to see the club there too. It is a reality that Bale is not happy with them, that he does not exactly feel forgiveness towards Zidane and the board. He remembers the whistles and jeers. He knows that Zidane wanted him gone -- "it is pretty clear what I am doing," the Frenchman said at the end of last season; "if he goes tomorrow, so much the better," he said this summer -- and he knows that in July and August no one defended him. And yet when it came to it, they didn't let him go either.