Charlie Adam is a “Coward.” Is Gareth Bale?
After Charlie Adam’s horror tackle on Gareth Bale during the Liverpool vs Tottenham pre-season friendly, the Welshman spoke out against the Liverpool midfielder, calling him a “coward.” As a Liverpool fan, I do sometimes find it hard to stick up for Charlie Adam (and I am not going to here), and this latest incident has not made that task any easier, but he is certainly not the first player to make a bad challenge and he won’t be the last. Gareth Bale saw fit to call him a “coward” (In my opinion, a few cowardly tackles does not make a man a coward), but should the Welshman look in the mirror before condemning those around him?
The first issue I will take with Bale is the fact that he should never have been on the pitch in the first place. He pulled out of representing Team GB in the Olympic Games just a few weeks ago because we was injured (apparently) and yet he has popped up on a number of occasions during Spurs tour of North America. Clearly he pulled out of the Olympics for reasons other than his fitness, so what could they be? As he is clearly OK with the idea of a British team then it must mean that he pulled out because he was afraid of injury. But surely the brave and honorable Welshman would never pull out because he was afraid of being hurt?
The other problem I have with Bale pointing his accusing finger at Charlie Adam is that football is a contact sport. You are going to get hit. If you look back in time to Maradona or Pelé, they were both kicked from pillar to post in every single game they played. Even now we regularly see Lionel Messi being assaulted on the football pitch, yet he has never made a personal attack on a fellow professional in the way that Bale so valiantly has. Call me old fashioned, but if you have a problem with somebody you tell them, not the gathered media.
The intent of this piece is not to call Gareth Bale a coward or anything of the sort. I do not know the man. I am not fit to make any kind of judgement call about the Welshman’s personality. It does however interest me to know what makes Bale fit to make a judgement call on Charlie Adam. Yes, he has now injured Bale on two separate occasions, but he is also a loving husband to Sophie-Leigh Anderson. Each and every person on this planet will have both good and bad traits, but it is not up to Gareth Bale, or anybody else for that matter, to put people in the box marked “coward.”
