Amidst all the goings on at RM, I was highly amused to discover that Bale

[Burney]

"Gareth Bale's language tutor has said that the Welshman's grasp of the Spanish language "is better than what he shows in interviews".
Bale has now lived in Madrid for four years, but has only given a limited number of interviews in Spanish.

According to Michael Gomez, the Real Madrid attacker has a strong grasp of the Spanish language, and is only held back by a lack of confidence when it comes to speaking in public.

"His standard of Spanish is better than what he shows in interviews," Gomez told La Sexta. "Gareth is a perfectionist and until he believes he is flawless at something then he loses a bit of confidence and will sell himself short, he becomes apprehensive.

"My role is to ensure his understanding of Spanish gets better and even more importantly, for his confidence to grow in this aspect. He is aware he needs to keep taking classes and adapt to life in Spain even more." "

To be fair, though, if I'd been paid handsomely to be someone's language tutor for years and he still wasn't speaking it, I'd probably say that, too.

[redgunamo]

Right. I was just gonna say, How odd, that his language teacher would say that

To be fair, though, if I'd been paid handsomely to be someone's language tutor for years and he still wasn't speaking it, I'd probably say that, too.