🎥 Gareth Bale's 5️⃣ most iconic moments | OneFootball

Gareth Bale announced his retirement from football on Monday at the age of 33.

The former Wales international winger will be remembered as the greatest player in his nation’s history and a five-time Champions League winner.

Here are five key moments in his career.

Sweet 16

In April 2006, Bale made his senior debut for Southampton at the age of just 16 years and 275 days.

The following month he went one better when he started for Wales in a friendly against Trinidad and Tobago at the age of just 16 years and 315 days.

His prodigious displays earned Ryan Giggs comparisons, and he was soon off to Tottenham Hotspur in a £5m move.

Taxi for Maicon!

Bale’s first spell at Spurs was a slow burner but his career really began to take off in the 2010/11 season and his performance in a Champions League group stage encounter with Inter is the stuff of legend.

Spurs were 4-0 down at half-time at San Siro but a sensational second half display from Bale saw him score a hat-trick and very nearly snatch an unlikely draw.

He gave Inter full-back Maicon a particularly torrid time which the Brazilian is probably still having nightmares about to this day.

Hala Madrid

Bale went from strength-to-strength with Spurs and after being named the PFA Player of the Year in both 2011 and 2013, he moved to Real Madrid for then-world record £85m fee.

It quickly proved to be money well spent from Los Blancos’ point of view, and his incredible solo goal against Barcelona in the 2014 Copa del Rey remains one of the high points of his career.

Wales. Golf. Madrid.

“I think Gareth Bale is a very particular kind of person… he comes across as a bit strange. The first thing he thinks about is Wales, then golf and after that, Real Madrid.”

Those were the infamous words of former Real Madrid player Predrag Mijatović, which sum up why Bale was often the subject of criticism during his trophy-laden nine year spell at the Bernabéu.

Bale’s love for the golf course was seemingly only outweighed by his love for his country, and Wales caught the winger at the peak of his powers when they made it all the way to the semi-finals of Euro 2016 with their talisman netting three goals at the tournament.

He went on to represent his country at both Euro 2020 and the 2022 World Cup – the first time the Dragons had qualified for the tournament since 1958.

One of the GOAT UCL final goals

Bale lifted the Champions League for the first time at the end of his first season as a Real Madrid player, scoring in extra-time has Los Blancos came from behind to beat rivals Atlético.

Two years later he scored in the penalty shoot-out as Madrid overcame Atlético again, before he lifted the trophy for a third time after a final victory over Juventus in his hometown of Cardiff the following season.

But the best was yet to come as, in 2018, Bale scored one of the all-time great Champions League final goals as Zinedine Zidane’s side beat Liverpool in Kyiv.

He was an unused substitute as Madrid won the Champions League again in 2022, taking his European medal haul to five before he finished his career in MLS with LAFC.