Tottenham Hotspur are going through something of a rebuild under Ange Postecoglou, but over the last ten to fifteen years, they have been lucky enough to watch some genuinely sensational footballers.
For example, while he’s not quite the player he once was, club captain Son Heung-min will unquestionably go down as a modern legend, and his former strike partner Harry Kane may well have been the best forward to ever grace the Premier League.
However, before those two came to define a period in Spurs’s recent history, the star of the show was a certain Welsh superstar, Mr Gareth Bale.
The Cardiff-born winger was an absolute monster for the Lilywhites, and it looked like they may have found his replacement a few years ago, only for that player to leave for nothing this year.
Bale’s Spurs career
Back in the far-flung year of 2007, Spurs paid Southampton £10m – including add-ons – for their exciting up-and-coming young full-back called Bale – yes, he started at left-back.
At the time, there was an expectation that he would become a Premier League-level player, but people weren’t sure just how good he would be.
However, despite a bright start in his first five games for the club, which included a goal against Arsenal, he damaged a ligament in his ankle, and when he came back eight months later, he struggled.
In fact, he didn’t win a game for the club until his 25th appearance, and reportedly, Sir Alex Ferguson told Harry Redknapp to drop him from the team because he was becoming a bad luck charm. Fortunately, the Englishman didn’t listen to him, and when things started to turn around, it was he who moved the young talent to the left wing.
After that, the 6 foot 1 dynamo exploded, and in the 2012/13 season, he reached a genuinely world-class level, racking up a frankly absurd haul of 26 goals and ten assists in 44 appearances, meaning he averaged a goal involvement once every 1.33 games from the wing that season.
Unsurprisingly, this insane form led Real Madrid to pay a whopping £85m for his services that summer, and over the next seven years, he would win everything there was to win in club football, before coming back to Spurs on loan for the 20/21 season and then retiring a few years later at MLS side LA Galaxy.
Overall, the Welshman has a genuine shout for being the most talented Spurs player of the last 24 years, alongside the likes of Kane and Son, and just a few years ago, some believed that they might have just found their new Bale.
What went wrong for Ryan Sessegnon?
Yes, the former Spurs player in question is Ryan Sessegnon, and while it may sound utterly absurd today, there were comparisons between the Englishman and Bale in the years before the North Londoners opted to splash £25m on him in the summer of 2019.
For example, just two years prior, football.london’s then Fulham writer Ryan O’Donovan claimed the full-back ‘could be one of the best English players in the country one day’ and that he could ‘see him being exactly like Gareth Bale’ in the sense that he would develop into a superstar wide attacker.
Moreover, just a year later, Matt Target, who was a teammate of Bales at Southampton and was a teammate of Sessegnon at the time, told the Independent that the young full-back was “definitely right up there with the likes of Luke Shaw, Gareth Bale” when talking about young prospects he had played with.
Now, to be fair to those who made bold comparisons in the past, the Roehampton-born talent was immense for the Cottagers at the time. He ended the 17/18 campaign with a haul of 16 goals and eight assists, then scored two goals and provided six assists in just 35 Premier League appearances the following season – his first in the competition.
It looked for all intents and purposes that he would take off once he settled in North London following his move in 2019, but unfortunately for all involved, that just didn’t happen.
During his five years as a Tottenham player, he would suffer five hamstring injuries, among other fitness issues, spend a season on loan with German side Hoffenheim and make a grand total of 57 competitive appearances for the North Londoners in which he scored three goals and provided four assists.
Ultimately, after five years of mostly downs, Sessegnon left Tottenham this summer and returned to Fulham on a free, and while he may still end up having a top-flight career to be proud of, he’s never going to reach the levels that Bale did – although we don’t think many could.