Bale: "We're like robots; they tell us when to eat, where to be..."

Gareth Bale has talked about the modern footballer life during a documentary for BT Sports Films to be aired on 29 May. He compares the modern footballers to robots. “As a professional athlete, particularly in a team environment, you can’t choose your own timetable like in golf or tennis. It’s like we’re basically just robots. We’re told where to be, when to be there, what time we have to eat, what time we have to report to the coach. It’s as though you lose your freedom to a certain extent," said Bale. “You can’t decide what you want to do and when you want to do it. So in that sense, I can totally understand why people say that. But on the other hand, I think that a career in football is so short that you have to sacrifice those things. "When you’re a kid, you don’t so much going on in your head, you can just play with your mates and have a laugh. When you become a professional there are all types of pressure, of expectation, of people saying negative things about you all the time, and you lose that feeling you had as a kid.” As a reminder, Los Blancos forward is being linked with a move to either Tottenham or Manchester United.

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