Ronaldo's status at Real Madrid made Bale's move Tottenham 'complicated'

The Welsh star completed a blockbuster switch to the Spanish giants in the summer of 2013 after ripping it up with 26 goals and 14 assists in 40 appearances in his final season in north London.

As a result of that, Bale earned a world-record £85.3million move to the Santiago Bernabeu to be their newest blockbuster signing.

A player with pace, power and exquisite technical ability, Bale was cut very much from the same cloth as Ronaldo, who had joined four years earlier for a fee of £80million from Manchester United.

The Portuguese star was well on the way to making himself a Real Madrid legend, a status that caused plenty of headaches for Tottenham's Director Of Football Administration at the time.

Now CEO of Newcastle United, Eales told the Sunday Edition: "It was an interesting one.

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"You talk about the 'Taxi for Maicon' game (against Inter Milan in the Champions League) - Gareth became one of the leading players in the world and we got to that stage where it was clear that Gareth wanted to have that move.

"When it got to that stage and he was committed it was about how do we get the maximum value possible, but it was one of the most complicated deals that I've ever dealt with.

"We were dealing with Real Madrid, who had Cristiano Ronaldo. And they wanted to get it so that Ronaldo was still the most expensive player and they were paying more, so there was a lot of negotiation about how they were going to spin it at their end because they were protecting Ronaldo.

"But we got there in the end - at that stage we just want to maximise the deal obviously it was a world record transfer at the time that it took place.

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"All of us during my time at Tottenham would have loved to keep Gareth but ultimately, he wanted to go on and have that opportunity and you couldn't begrudge him really. He's a great guy."

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Bale went on to spend nine years with Real Madrid, scoring 106 goals in 258 appearances for the club.

In that time he also won three La Liga titles, five Champions Leagues, Copa Del Rey and three FIFA Club World Cups.