Tottenham Hotspur have indicated to Real Madrid that they are interested in signing their former player Gareth Bale, but on certain conditions.
Real desperately want to offload Bale this summer, with manager Zinedine Zidane insisting that the Welsh captain has no future at the Bernabeu.
Now his old club have indicated that they are willing to buy him back for a fee between £45 million and £54 million – substantially less than they got from the Spanish club for the winger when they sold him in 2013 for £89.2 million, a world record at the time.
The stumbling block for Spurs, as it is for any team wanting to broker a deal for the forward who turned d 30 on Tuesday is his wages. Bale earns currently £600,000 a week with Real, and Spurs have indicated that they are only prepared to pay half of that figure.
The ball is now firmly back in Real’s court, and is a test of how much they want Bale, who has won four Champions League titles with them , out of the club.
Andy is an exiled English football fan living in Cyprus. He loves all sports but football is his abiding passion, and he still has dreams every now and then about scoring the winning goal in a Wembley Cup Final, even though his playing days are long gone. He follows most major leagues, across Europe at least, and has a favoured team in each. When he’s not watching, listening, reading or downloading podcasts about football, he spend his time worrying about his beloved Arsenal.