On this day in 2023: Spurs legend announces his retirement | OneFootball

It was two years ago today when Tottenham Hotspur legend Gareth Bale announced his retirement from professional football, after sixteen years in the game.

Spurs legend retired from football on this day, in 2023

During two spells in North London, Bale scored 71 goals in 224 appearances, despite being both pretty young, and pretty old. Also, a lot of those appearances early on were as a left-back, which still feels so weird to think about it. If there wasn't often talk about him transitioning to an attacker so well, it would genuinely be hard to remember it even happened.

Most fans will point to the Champions League game against Inter Milan, where he scored a hat-trick despite Spurs having ten men, as the game where he announced himself to the world stage. Perhaps that is true, but he was already beginning to show how good he was before that game.

In August of 2010, a couple of months before the Inter game, Bale scored an absolutely incredible, unique goal away to Stoke City, by arrowing in a volley from an angle, that went straight into the top corner. Plenty of fans remember knowing from that day just what a player the club had on their hands.

Despite being just 21 years of age, the Welshman won PFA players player of the year for that season, 2010/11. Two years later, he would again win the PFA players players of the year, as well as the FWA footballer of the year, and the official premier league player of the season. For that period of 2010-2013, he was named in the official PFA team of the year on all three occasions.

It was that final season, the 2012/13 year, where he really did announce himself as one of the very, very best players in the world. Some of the goals he scored out of nowhere were just otherwordly. There are so many to mention, but the last minute goal at West Ham United, where he sidefooted it into the top corner from just 25 yards - was really the confirmation that he was playing a different sport to the rest of his team mates.

In total, he scored 21 goals in 33 Premier League games, the type of numbers that do not go unnoticed - and Real Madrid certainly noticed, bringing him in for a then world record fee.

Plenty of trophies and Champions League final goals later, Bale made a romantic return to Spurs` in the 20/21 season, and his numbers were actually not that bad. In just 923 Premier League minutes, he scored 11 goals, and provided two assists. There was a game against Crystal Palace in March where him and Harry Kane were just taking the mick out of everyone out there.

Just a real shame that there were no fans there to see it. By the time crowds were back, he was back on Real Madrid's bench, and won his fifth and final Champions League. After that, he jetted off into the Los Angeles sun, helping them to win the MLS cup with a last gasp equaliser in the final. He then scored Wales' first, and still only, World Cup goal since 1958, before retiring at the end of that tournament.