Why is Gareth Bale still the exception?

There were those who doubted whether Gareth Bale could handle the pressure, expectation and all the rest that comes with being a Galactico. The Welshman was technically the biggest Galactico of all upon making his world record move to Real Madrid from Spurs three years ago. No player, especially not Bale, could justify such a fee. How he has proved them wrong.

Since then Bale has underlined his status as one of the very best, winning the Champions League twice in what has become a period of glittering European success for Real Madrid. Nobody doubts the Welshman any longer and on Monday he became the highest paid player in the sport, signing a deal that will keep him in the Spanish capital until 2022.

“I couldn’t tell you if anyone was interested,” Bale said when asked whether he could have opted to return to the Premier League instead, with Manchester United linked with the winger on a seemingly monthly basis. “Since I have been here I have been fully concentrated on Madrid. I am happy here which is why I signed a deal. We never speak about these things [interest from other clubs]. If they have [asked about me], they have; we never really speak about it.”

Indeed, there was never any real prospect of Bale leaving Real Madrid. Florentino Perez views the 27-year-old as the club’s figurehead and poster boy in the post-Cristiano Ronaldo age, with the contract handed to the former Spurs and Southampton winger illustrative of that. He has well and truly entered the realm of Britain’s greatest ever football players.

But why is Bale still the exception? His move to Real Madrid was heralded as a watershed moment for the British game, setting a precedent for his travel-shy countrymen by swapping the Premier League for the continent. Yet three years later Bale’s lead hasn’t been followed. He remains a sole Union Jack planted in foreign ground.

Joe Hart is at Torino, of course, but that’s through his enforced exile from the Etihad Stadium. If Pep Guardiola wasn’t guarding the door he’d still be a Premier League player, and so the England goalkeeper can’t claim to have truly followed Bale’s lead. While the United Kingdom is exiting the European Union the country’s footballers left the continent a long time ago.

British players are football’s equivalent of that thirty-something everyone knows who still lives with their parents. They are Matthew McConaughey in that forgettable film Failure to Launch, with Bale playing the role of Sarah Jessica Parker’s character who finds a way to get the former to finally spread his wings. Except in this case Britain’s footballers are ignoring Parker.

So why are British players so reluctant to make the move abroad? It’s true that with the Premier League the most lucrative division in world football there are obvious benefits to staying at home, but there is more to factor in. Premier League saturation has instilled an ignorance in an entire generation, with players buying into the ‘Greatest League In The World’ hyperbole just as much as anyone else.

But such an attitude is holding back the British game. Our game has become insular and closed-minded, highlighted by the decline of the English national team. Footballing methods in the country have grown tired and in desperate need of modernisation, with the epidemic unwillingness to try new things only exacerbating that.

It’s a vicious cycle, though. British players are widely deemed to be lacking in tactical nous by their continental counterparts, yet they can’t gain that nous without experiencing different footballing cultures. How do they break that cycle if not even the success of Bale at Real Madrid has changed the perception of British players?

One player does offer hope that British players are opening their minds to the concept of playing abroad, with Scottish teenager Oliver Burke making a £13 million move from Nottingham Forest to the Bundesliga’s RB Leipzig in the last transfer window. In fact, Burke has been compared to Bale in terms of playing style and physicality, but the real comparison is in how he has also opted to test himself on the continent.

Burke aside, though, British football’s continental contingent is essentially non existent. The Welshman remains the exception to the rule and if a Galactico can’t set a precedent to follow who can?