Gareth Bale and the Curse of the Superstar Team

When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more trophies to wave in Barcelona's stupid faces.

Gareth Bale has been getting jeered by the Bernabéu for a while now. You wouldn't know why if you looked at his scoring and assist numbers, but he has made some uncharacteristic mistakes this season. He's Superman with his heat vision set to "slow-cook." On Saturday, in a 4-1 win against Real Sociedad, Bale biffed a couple scoring opportunities, one of which was particularly egregious because he stepped in front of a ready-to-shoot James Rodriguez, only to pull the ball wide of a keeperless net. This sort of brain-to-foot hiccup happens even to excellent players from time-to-time; it's not a big deal. But Bale is a year-and-a-half into not living up to the even-at-the-time-insane Welsh Ronaldo hype that followed him to Madrid, which means his every flub is an occasion to suffer the ire of Madridistas, who have chosen to brook nothing short of perfection.

If these fans' expectations were any lower, they would never be disappointed. Los Blancos are probably the best squad in the world right now. They're a couple Barcelona draws and an Atlético stumble away from putting La Liga on ice, and slim favorites to win the Champions League after achieving La Decima last season. They regularly annihilate their domestic opponents like they did Sociedad over the weekend. The sky over the Bernabéu is as blue as Paul Newman's eyes, but in the way rich folk often seem more miserable than the rest of us, Madridistas are perpetually unsatisfiable and unsatisfied fans. When their team isn't playing just so, they grouse.

Culés are a similarly hard-to-please bunch. So are Bavarians. Maybe it's that supporters buy too strongly into the team's mythos-laced marketing—get told to demand greatness often enough and one day you might start following orders—but regardless of the reason, the atmosphere around these three historically dominant clubs is always a little bit aggrieved and on the edge of panic. The parameters for success in a given season are literally something out of a haughty Mercedes-Benz ad: the best, or nothing. This means not enjoying wins so much as scrutinizing them, not appreciating players so much as fretting about their shortcomings. When every flaw in one's team is the difference between the space shuttle touching down softly on Mars and smashing into the face of an extraterrestrial canyon, every flaw is a source of dread. There's nothing particularly wrong with Gareth Bale, but there are some minor things wrong with him, which is how he can score a beautiful, bending free kick and get whistled by his own fans in the same game.

Fanbases aren't monolithic, which means there are surely supporters of European giants who acknowledge that to watch Bayern or Madrid with genuine investment each week is to experience innumerable Christmases. But these level-headed people do not appear to inform the actions of the clubs, which spend like AmEx black card-wielding teens and go through managers like dollar store socks. They are forever chasing better talent, greater stature, more titles. They are ugly, cynical, desirous maws dead-bent on destroying each other. There is not much stopping to smell the roses involved.

To be in their midst doesn't look like much fun. Players move to massive clubs because they want to compete for everything and get paid handsomely to do it, but they often find what Gareth Bale is finding: an ungratefulness that makes you wonder what more the fans could possibly want, and management that sees you only as a means to an end. Bale claims he's happy in Madrid, which sounds both true and not. He is probably pleased to be plying his trade alongside the best teammates he's ever going to have, for a team that's likely to take home a couple trophies by the end of the season. But to play the way he does and catch persistent hell? That's not something anyone could enjoy.