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Gareth Bale has praised Jude Bellingham’s ability to deal with the intense spotlight at Real Madrid and told him winning the Champions League would cap off a perfect first season at the Bernabeu.
Bellingham has enjoyed a dream start to his career in Spain winning La Liga and scoring 19 goals and providing six assists along the way and has the chance to make it an even better season when he faces his former club Borussia Dortmund at Wembley on June 1.
Bale won five Champions Leagues in his eight years at Real Madrid but knows all too well what the pressure of playing for one of the biggest clubs in world can be like.
And Bale, at a Mastercard panel discussing the power of the football community to inspire collective action on sustainability, said: “At such a young age, to be doing what he’s doing is fantastic.
“It’s great to see, it’s refreshing and it’s important. The intensity, the pressure that you can feel under. So, he had a great start.
“Obviously, they still have a big game to come and it’ll be great for him to win a Champions League in his first season, that really settles the pressure and, hopefully, he can kick on from there.
“It is not easy moving to a different country, even though he has had the experience of playing in Germany, but such a big club like Real Madrid the spotlight is always on and the intensity is always there.”
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If Bellingham, 20, were to win the Champions League then he would become only the fifth British player to win the trophy with a foreign team after Bale, Paul Lambert, Steve McManaman and Owen Hargreaves.
Bale hung up his boots at the start of last season after winning the MLS Cup with LAFC and despite enjoying huge success in his time at Real Madrid – winning three La Liga titles, five Champions Leagues and three FIFA World Club Cups along with a hat full of other domestic cups – the pressure of playing for a club like Real Madrid was always there.
But overall Bale looks back fondly on his time in Spain.
He added: “Of course, there’s always going to be ups and downs. It’s how you deal with those, how you bounce back, how your character comes out. There were obviously some great times, there were obviously some bad. But, I think normally the good outweighs the bad in the end.”
Now Bale has teamed up with Mastercard to lend his voice to the ongoing battle against the climate crisis.
Speaking at an event to launch Mastercard’s Pledge Ball – a football made from recycled boots and engraved with promises by the game’s community to inspire collective action on sustainability.
Bale added: “I’ve been lucky enough to achieve my goals in football, score a few too, and think it’s important that we all try to set personal goals for the things that are important to us.
“It’s why I’ve given my pledge to the Mastercard Pledge Ball, and I hope the 450 million fans set to watch the final are inspired to do the same. If football has a superpower, it’s teamwork, and I think that’s exactly what our planet needs a bit of right now.
“The more people we can get buying into this, because it is such a massive issue. Never mind anything else – it’s important to get people to do these little changes. If we all do those one-per-cent-ers, if does add up to millions of people, and that’s the shift that we need.
“We normally have a vegan day at home where we don’t eat meat. We have soy or oat milk, whatever the kids fancy that day. I think if everybody took those little baby steps one thing at a time, it really will make a massive difference in five-10 years time.”
The Pledge Ball, created in celebration of Mastercard’s 30 years of sponsorship of the world’s greatest football club competition, was inspired by Mastercard’s work with sustainability and sports charity Pledgeball for Champions Innovate
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