Stan Collymore has scoffed at claims that Gareth Bale is the greatest British player of all time — claiming he’s in the top 15 and maybe the top 10 but certainly not in the top three.
Bale, who won five Champions League trophies with Real Madrid, announced his retirement from football last week and the decision was met with a big debate over whether he was the best player the British Isles have ever produced.
But former Liverpool and Nottingham Forest star turned Mirror Sport pundit Collymore said: “It’s quite bizarre because of how many Champions Leagues he has won and the run he went on at Spurs that turned him from someone who couldn’t win a Premier League game to a tour de force.
“And because of the trophies you have to put him in amongst the greatest ever.
“But I look at Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, John Charles — which would obviously mean a lot to Bale — Ian Rush, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard and, I don’t know what it is, whether it’s this perceived laissez faire attitude of ‘Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order’, but I can’t put him in with some of those.
That sounds bizarre given Gerrard won one Champions League and Bale the five.
“But if you asked me to pick players I’d have Graeme Souness above him, Gerrard above him, Dalglish and maybe Lampard.
“And that’s because of where they took their clubs on to without the stellar cast Bale had around him at Real Madrid.
“Those four are all streets ahead of Bale in terms of what the five of them have given British football."
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“Bale was a one-man band at Spurs and they didn’t win the league, they were just a good team to watch.
“He might be in the top 10, top 15 British players ever but he’s not the best.
“Don’t get me wrong, I will fondly remember watching him tear down the wing at White Hart Lane because he was a joy to watch.
“And I’ve no doubt we’ll see him again — in fact, I can see him having a Keegan-esque relationship with the game for a number of years where he pops back up in the game then disappears again for a bit.
“So I wish him well and I’m glad he has not just milked it and milked it like he could have.
“He has gone, ‘No, I don’t have the love for it anymore’, and I wonder how long he has felt that way.
“He was a frightening talent on his day but it’s the right time to walk off into the sunset with his nine iron.”
