Txistu’s proprietors must have Real Madrid season tickets. In May Bale scored the decisive goal in Real’s Champions League final triumph over their city rivals, Atlético. (‘I wish I could remember more about the goal,’ he says. ‘I watch it back now and I just think how much my knee must have been killing me because I slid so far celebrating.’) The previous month he had run half the length of the pitch to score and win his team the Copa del Rey (the Spanish FA Cup) against their fiercest rivals, Barcelona. It was the sort of Roy of the Rovers moment that crashes social media and justified Real’s extraordinary outlay on Bale that placed him among the club’s pantheon of galácticos. ‘It was incredible,’ his then teammate Xabi Alonso said of Bale’s last-gasp winner. ‘I have never seen anything like it’ – this from a man who has played in Spain, England and Germany, won the World Cup and La Liga, and has a pair each of European Championship and Champions League winners’ medals.