Zinedine Zidane will come grovelling back to Gareth Bale when he needs him to rescue Real Madrid's season, the Welshman's former coach says
- Harry Redknapp, Gareth Bale's former coach at Tottenham Hotspur, believes Real Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane will come grovelling back to the Welshman when times are hard later this season.
- Bale has been excluded from most of Madrid's pre-season games, with Zidane looking to force the 30-year-old out of the club.
- The former Tottenham star looked set for a move to China, however the deal was blocked by Madrid president Florentino Perez.
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Zinedine Zidane will come crawling back to Gareth Bale when he needs him to rescue Real Madrid's season, the Welshman's former coach Harry Redknapp has said.
Madrid has had a difficult pre-season campaign, losing to Bayern Munich, Tottenham Hotspur, and rivals Atletico Madrid - who in July thumped Zidane's side 7-3 at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
And Bale, 30, has missed most of the summer action after being ostracized by Zidane, who has admitted he is keen for the former Tottenham Hotspur player to leave the club in the coming weeks.
But Redknapp, who managed Bale during his time at Tottenham between 2008-2012, believes it won't be too long before Zidane needs Bale to play if the club's bad form continues into the new season.
Redknapp told BBC Radio Wales: "He's at a great club and you know what will happen, probably in a month or two they'll have a few bad results and Real Madrid will turn and say, 'Come on Gareth we didn't mean it really and you're back in the team.'"
He also dubbed Zidane's treatment of Bale strange, saying: "He's not a lad who's in the dressing room causing you problems or upsetting the rest of the spirit in the team, he's not one of them lads, so I don't know why you would treat Gareth like that. It was a bit strange."
Bale joined Madrid from Tottenham in 2013 for a then-world record fee of $102.8 million, and has since scored 102 goals in 231 games for the Spanish giant, helping the club win 13 trophies - including four UEFA Champions League titles - in his six season tenure.
However the 30-year-old's time at the Santiago Bernabeu has been heavily marred by injury.
Bale has made just 79 La Liga starts in the past four seasons for Madrid, and in total he has missed an astonishing 70 games through injury since joining the club six years ago.
The Welshman looked set to complete a move to Chinese Super League club Jiangsu Suning earlier this summer, however Madrid club president Florentino Perez pulled the plug at the last moment.
Real Madrid's first match in the 2019-2020 season is an August 17 trip to Celta Vigo.