Gareth Bale
Welsh association football player
Gareth Frank Bale (born 16 July 1989) is a Welsh former professional footballer who played as a right winger, most notably for Tottenham Hotspur, Real Madrid, and the Wales national team. He is widely regarded as one of the best players of his generation and the greatest Welsh player of all time. A two-time member of the UEFA Team of the Year, he is a five-time UEFA Champions League winner. Bale was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for his contributions to association football and various charities.
Bale began his professional career at Southampton, playing as a left-back before moving to Tottenham in 2007. From the 2009–10 season, under coach Harry Redknapp, Bale transformed into a winger. With Tottenham, he rose to international prominence during the club's 2010–11 Champions League campaign. At the end of the season, he was named the PFA Players' Player of the Year, before earning the award again following his 2012–13 campaign that led Real Madrid to sign him in September 2013 for a then world-record transfer fee of £85.1 million (€100.8 million).
Bale went on to be an integral player for Madrid, scoring over 100 goals for them. In his debut season, he scored the winning goal in the 2014 Copa del Rey final against rivals Barcelona and the go-ahead goal in extra time of the 2014 Champions League final, helping Madrid win the long-awaited La Décima.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gareth Bale” is welsh association football player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gareth, Bale and Welsh, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “welsh association football player” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q184586. VIAF identifies the subject as 232067524. The Library of Congress control number is no2012021559. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 2022, 2007 and 2009.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Gareth Bale”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Gareth Bale primary sources, Gareth Bale archive and Gareth research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gareth Bale”?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Gareth Bale” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.