PETE SOUTH describes how a spindly lad from south Wales became the most expensive player on the planet

It was a hat-trick so startling that neither Gareth Bale nor his team-mates seemed to comprehend its quality, or its magnitude. The Welshman and his bewildered, wide-eyed colleagues skipped and jumped their way back to the halfway line, unable to believe what had happened after his third and final arrow had been fired into the bottom left corner of Julio Cesar’s net in Tottenham’s 4-3 Champions League defeat against Inter Milan at the San Siro in October 2010.
“It w...