The former Tottenham Hotspur star has truly fulfilled the potential he showed all those years ago.
Danny Murphy has admitted to The Evening Standard that he never expected former Tottenham Hotspur team-mate Gareth Bale to scale the heights he has done.
The Welsh wizard secured a then world-record £80 million move to Real Madrid in 2013 following an exceptional last few years at Tottenham.
The 27-year-old joined Spurs from Southampton a decade ago and was briefly a team-mate of Murphy, who joined Fulham later in the summer.
And the former Lilywhites midfielder admits that he never imagined that Bale – who has won the Champions League three times with Real – would go on to enjoy the star-studded career that he has done.
He told The Standard: “When I played briefly alongside Gareth Bale at Tottenham, I could never have predicted he’d become a world star.
“He has grown into a much better footballer than I imagined he would. Yes, it was clear he had the potential to become a good player. When you saw him in full flow, you could see he had the talent to have a strong career in the Premier League.
“Bale joined Tottenham from Southampton in May 2007 and I moved to Fulham at the end of August, so we spent pre-season and the early part of the 2007-08 campaign together.
“Bale was a great athlete with a nice left foot, but he lacked confidence on the pitch and was quite a shy character.”
Murphy isn’t the only one. Precious few people could have foreseen what type of player Bale would become; especially after a tough first few years in North London.
Bale, who began his career as a left-back, did not really begin to show his true potential until then-Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp deployed him in a more advanced role and the rest, as they say, is history.
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