Gareth Bale's agent responds to ongoing Wrexham links
Gareth Bale will not be coming out of retirement to join the Hollywood revolution at Wrexham, despite the pleas of Red Dragons co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
Wrexham’s journey has become global news over the last couple of years, with Reynolds and McElhenney completing their takeover in 2020 and putting the historic Welsh football club firmly in the spotlight. They have invested heavily and recently saw the team return to the EFL for the first time in 15 years by winning the National League title.
The club reaped the rewards of tempting goalkeeper Ben Foster out of retirement in the closing stages of the campaign and there are already big plans for the 2023/24 season ahead in League Two.
McElhenney, who found fame in the long-running cult TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, first propositioned Bale on Twitter: “Hey Gareth Bale, let’s play golf, where I totally won’t spend four hours trying to convince you to un-retire for one last magical season.”
Bale later joked, “I think I was looking more for a free round of golf off Rob.”
The Wrexham pair later denied it was a joke on their part, with McElhenney going on to tell Welsh broadcaster S4C: “I think there’s seriousness from our side, but I don’t know that there’s seriousness from his. I think he’s happy.”
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But Reynolds appeared to hint there was still hope when he said: “I like that we can kind of do some stuff that’s a little outside the box of convention when it comes to goofing around. I didn’t think Ben Foster would be coming over and he did.”
McElhenney also seems to be refusing to take no for an answer, calling on Bale just this week during an appearance on The Aarthi and Sriram Show to give it ‘one last year’.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Bale’s long-standing agent, Jonathan Barnett, has now quashed the idea that the 33-year-old former Real Madrid star has any desire to be back on a football pitch.
“He’s flattered by the offers, but they’re all tongue-in-cheek,” Barnett said. “He’s having a great life at the moment and [it’s] well deserved – he’s been the best British football, probably ever. He’s now having a well-deserved rest and we’ll see how things go.
“They haven’t actually spoken to me, they’ve only spoken to Gareth. But Gareth doesn’t want to play football anymore. He’s had a great career, enjoyed himself, but he’s having a great life with his family, which is the most important thing, and spending a lot of time with his children and that’s what he wants to do. He’ll do other things later down the line, but at the moment, let him just enjoy himself.
“We’d been discussing [retirement] for a long time. For him, it was the right time. He’s achieved everything he wanted to. He played for Wales at the highest level in a World Cup, which is what he really wanted to do, and I think he knew his body wasn’t up to it anymore. He’d had a hard time with his body in the last few years and now he’s a different person.”
Having left Real Madrid in 2022 and spending the end of that year helping LAFC win the MLS Cup for the first time and going to the World Cup with Wales, Bale hung his boots in January 2023.