If you were to scan world football and suggest who might fit best into a Manchester United team, who would most comfortably conform to its traditions and expectations, one name springs to mind.
Not Lionel Messi or James Rodriguez, not Bastien Schweinsteiger or Andrea Pirlo, not Neymar or Andres Iniesta, good as they all might be. The player who seems to have been destined all his career to wear a red United shirt, but has yet to do so, is Gareth Bale.
Gareth Bale's dashing style is a perfect fit for Manchester United
Were you to compile an identikit of the ideal United player, one who perfectly suits the club's sense of itself and what it should be, one who slips seamlessly into the tradition forged around the style of George Best and Ryan Giggs, he would be look like Gareth Bale.
Quick, hungry, determined, brave, a Celt with an eye for goal and ability to win matches on his own, there are not many that fit the template. Bale, though, has long demonstrated he has all the necessary qualifications to join the United pantheon.
Like they did with Edwin Van Der Sar, the club has missed several opportunities to fulfil such a destiny. Bale should have been recruited when he was at Southampton, when it was obvious to anyone with two eyes that he had the capacity to electrify, when his speed and athleticism were available at a throwaway cost.
True, after his stellar, Maicon-eviscerating days at Tottenham, when he carried his team into Europe and then demonstrated in that night in the San Siro how much he belonged in such elevated company, a bid was tabled for him. But that was in the uncertain times of the summer of 2013, when dithering characterised the recruitment operation and Madrid's sure-footed negotiators ran merry rings around United's tentative approach.
Bale scores against United while playing for Tottenham
• United's top summer transfer targets
But this time, there should be no mistake. The recruitment of Bale by Louis Van Gaal would signal not just the manager's ambition, not just his confidence, but also his understanding of what a United team should be. Build a side around Bale and Old Trafford traditions would inevitably be reinforced.
The Bale who scorched through the Barcelona defence in last season's Copa Del Rey final, taking a detour into the stand and still out-pacing a floundering back line, would be the most persuasive expression around of United tactical principals.
Hit and run at full pelt: that is the Mancunian Way. That is what Bale can deliver.
True, when he signed for Madrid, the lad from Cardiff made much of his childhood attachment to the club. A picture of him as a small boy, proudly wearing a white shirt was blown up to huge scale and stood behind him on the stage at the Bernabeu when he was first introduced to the crowd. Fate was much invoked. It was said he was going where he had always dreamed of playing. Being in Madrid was claimed to be his very footballing purpose.
But his subsequent time in Spain has suggested his hosts did not buy into such an effusive introduction. Frankly, the Madrid fans were less enthusiastic about his arrival than he was. For sure, he has been by no means a failure. No player who scores the crucial goal in the Champions League final can ever be described as faltering.
Yet, there has lingered a largely unwarranted suspicion of him among both the Madrid public and some of his colleagues, a mistrust caused by an assumption that a Welshman could not have the technical and tactical mastery to flourish at a place with such an elevated sense of its own prominence.
Bale makes his point to Real Madrid fans who booed him
At Old Trafford there would be no such prejudice. Especially not given the identity of the current assistant manager, who would be working most closely with him on the training ground. Like Giggs before him, Bale would be immediately revered, immediately recognised as someone who belongs, immediately welcomed home.
And if Van Gaal recruits that other United player in waiting, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to play alongside his new winger, the fans will be approaching ecstasy.
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