Berbatov: Bale’s move to Tottenham is ‘100 percent not working’

Stefan Bienkowski

• Updated: 23 May 2023 08:45 CDT
• 2 min read

Former Tottenham Hotspur striker Dimitar Berbatov believes Gareth Bale’s return to the Premier League side is “100 percent not working” and it now seems likely that he’ll return to Real Madrid. 

The Welsh international joined Spurs on a season-long at the start of the season, after being frozen out of Zinedine Zidane’s Madrid side. 

However, Bale’s return to London hasn’t exactly gone to plan and has played just 160 minutes of Premier League football since arriving in September. 

Berbatov admits he had high hopes for Bale when the deal was first announced and had hoped Spurs could have used him to challenge Liverpool for the league title. 

Yet it now seems as though Bale’s move to Tottenham isn’t going to work and unless he can break into Mourinho’s side with some impressive performances he’ll return to Madrid under the same cloud he left. 

“I was expecting a lot of him coming to Spurs, to shake things up and for him, Son and Kane to make it a trio up front that can rival the Liverpool attacking trio, for example,” Berbatov told Stats Perform News. 

“For the moment it is 100 percent not working.

“There are still games until the end of the season, enough for him to show what he can do, in the [EFL Cup] final they play as well.

“So hopefully he can get back to 100 percent and start playing. If not, in the end it is an easy decision – he can go back to Madrid.”

When asked about Bale being overlooked by Mourinho, Berbatov added: “In a way, it is disappointing that he is not being given more time to play. 

“But if you are not given more time to play, there are two reasons for that. Either are you injured and not in good shape to play or you are not performing well in training.

“Whatever the reason [for his lack of games] Gareth Bale is injury free now is because he’s on the bench for the team.

“But he’s not playing from the first minute so it means that obviously he’s not producing the right level of football Jose Mourinho wants from him, which is a shame because I like him a lot.”