Bale has played twice, with only one start, in 11 Real games since football in Spain restarted in June<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gareth Bale “didn’t want to play” in the Champions League last-16 second-leg tie against Manchester City, says Real Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wales forward Bale has been left out of Real’s 24-man squad for Friday’s match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 31-year-old only started 14 games in all competitions in 2019-20 and has played just twice since football in Spain restarted in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It was a personal conversation I had with him. He preferred not to play,” said Zidane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The rest remains between me and him but he said he didn’t want to play.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BBC Sport understands Bale decided not to travel to Manchester because he knew he had no chance of being involved in the match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
City won 2-1 in the first leg in Spain in February before the coronavirus pandemic caused the competition to be halted for almost five months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The winners of the tie will play either Lyon or Juventus in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bale – who was set to move to Chinese Super League club Jiangsu Suning last summer before the deal fell through – has looked indifferent in recent weeks, including pretending to be asleep as a substitute as Real went on a 10-game winning run to become Spanish champions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked if Bale’s future lies in Madrid, Zidane said: “I don’t know. Now he is a current player at Real Madrid. That has not changed. He is our player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I respect that and I respect him, like everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He preferred not to play. That is the only thing I can tell you. The rest of us are all here, preparing for the game. The only thing we are concentrating on is the game.” Bale ‘did not want to play’ – Zidane<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bale has played twice, with only one start, in 11 Real games since football in Spain restarted in June Gareth Bale “didn’t want to play” in the Champions League last-16 second-leg tie against Manchester City, says Real Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane. Wales forward Bale has been left out of Real’s 24-man squad for Friday’s match. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Gareth-Bale.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}