José Mourinho's Incredible Dig at Madrid Media After Gareth Bale's Winning Goal

Tottenham Hotspur manager José Mourinho has joked that he's looking forward to seeing the reaction of the Madrid press after Gareth Bale came off the bench to score the winning goal in Sunday's 2-1 win over Brighton.

The Welshman found himself alone in the box to head home a cross by fellow Real Madrid reject Sergio Reguilón, steering Spurs to an impressive victory and helping them climb up to second in the Premier League table.

After the game, Mourinho confirmed (via football.london) that Bale is close to full fitness and will soon be ready to start a league game, but he was delighted to see the winger making an impact of the bench.

"He doesn't have 90 minutes of a Premier League match in his legs yet so we're using the Europa League to complement his training process," Mourinho said. "We are using some matches in the Premier League when we decide to play him and the normal tendency for him will be of course to be better and better and better.

"That's it. He will start again on Thursday and even in a Europa League match when the intensity is different to the Premier League I will not play him for 90 minutes. I always will have this care with him until we feel that he's ready.

Mourinho admits Bale is close to full fitness | Julian Finney/Getty Images

"Today great impact, very important goal for us and after that he joined Harry in a very experienced way to play the last 15 minutes of the game, both very clever, very intelligent, both very good, holding the ball, bringing the ball to zones where they couldn't hurt us.

"So I'm very pleased for him, but very pleased especially for him because he deserves that. When I have five minutes I'm going to Safari to look at Madrid websites to see what they say."

For the record, there are already a few articles about the goal flying about in the Spanish media, and the fact that it was a Reguilón assist hasn't helped.

It was Bale's first goal in ten months, but the Welshman was quick to remind fans that the stats don't always tell the full story.

"I haven't scored since January but it's only about five games!" he said, via BBC Sport. "It sounds worse in months.

"It's been amazing since I came back, I settled in straight away and the team have been amazing with me. I'm very happy to be here and playing football again for a great club."


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Source : 90min