Jose Mourinho believes Gareth Bale is showing on and off the pitch that his confidence is blooming at Tottenham Hotspur. The 31-year-old has been looking much more like his old self in recent games, having scored twice and laid on two assists in his past three matches. Spurs fans have been waiting for Bale to click into gear five months after joining the club on loan from Real Madrid. However, injuries and fitness problems have prevented that until now and it seems the Welshman has finally found his groove again and he is expected to start in the Premier League against Burnley on Sunday.
Jose Mourinho said: “I think the mental is always a consequence of the physical. If a player feels great, if he is playing 100 per cent and if the feelings are all good there are no psychological problems or fears or barriers. When you have little worries and especially when you have a recent history of injuries it’s normal to have some fears and these fears have a consequence, but lately he has been fine. It’s just a question of how many minutes he can play and how many days he needs to recover between matches. He looks happier than ever, he looks confident. In training you can see he has his confidence back, the way he hits his shots. You could see from his goal on Wednesday. It was a confident shot. A player with fear or negative feelings would never have hit that type of shot. To strike the ball that way, I think that strike means a lot. It means freedom. It means freedom in relation to the brain muscle. For this you need to be in a good condition. He is in the best condition since he arrived.”
Mourinho believes that the most important expert on Bale’s body and the way to deal with it is the Wales international himself.
Jose Mourinho added: “He is a player with a lot of experience and a player with a lot of experience they know their body better than anyone. There is no coach, no fitness coach, no sports scientist, no medical staff that knows them better than a very experienced player, especially a player who had years of small problems, bigger problems, but situations that had have an had an influence and an impact on the past couple of years of his career. We trust him. We trust his experience and analysis, and everything with him is done with a great participation of everyone. Everyone wants the best for him because in the end the best for him is the best for Tottenham. So to have him and giving us important contributions is doing that bit by bit. Of course we want that in a more continuous way. Of course we have very important Premier League matches , a crucial final and crucial every minute of every game in the Europa League. So the more that we have Gareth, a player with his quality and confidence and experience and know-how of big moments, the better. So we have to be careful and trust a player with a lot of experience.”
The Tottenham fans have been desperate to see the quartet of Harry Kane, Son Heung-min, Dele Alli and Bale all playing together as an attacking force. Mourinho said it can and will happen but did not want to overshadow the contributions of others.
Jose Mourinho added: “I have lots of good players and these four you are saying, of course they are good players. Can they play together – of course they can, no problem at all. They can play together and they will play together some matches for sure – unless something wrong happens to one of them, which I hope does not. But I don’t want to talk about Dele and Bale as it looks like I forgot Lucas, Lamela, Bergwijn, Tanguy, Gio and Vinicius, because I don’t forget them. More than ever we need a squad. More than ever, the players have to think about only one match. I cannot just think about one match, I have to think about one, two, three, four and five and have to try to organise things in a way where we keep some balance to play all these matches in all these competitions, but no problem – they can play together no problem.”
