Harry Redknapp revealed that Sir Alex Ferguson told him to drop Gareth Bale when the then-Tottenham ace was enduring a hapless spell.
Bale retired from football in January last year and is widely considered one of the finest British players in history. Yet, in his early days at Tottenham, the Welsh wizard appeared to be cursed. He went 24 matches without winning when he was on the field for Spurs, either as a starter or a substitute.
With all of the media attention he was receiving, Bale's confidence was on the floor. During this run, legendary Manchester United manager Ferguson told Redknapp he would not play Bale as he considered him to be bad luck.
Redknapp, who managed Spurs between 2008 and 2012, chose to ignore the advice of the Scot - and it proved to be the perfect decision.
In an exclusive interview with Mirror Football, Redknapp, who was in Portsmouth to visit Kellogg's Football Camps – a UK-wide summer football programme for local kids – said: "When I first got to the club, he had played 20 odd games and had never been on the winning team.
"I remember Alex saying to me: 'I wouldn’t pick him, Harry, he is unlucky' because he had played around 24 games and had never ever been on a winning team, since he had been at Tottenham, which is an incredible record.
“Not that it was his fault, it was just the way it had worked out. If he came off the bench, they didn't win, and if he started they didn’t win. Eventually, we broke that voodoo and never looked back. His confidence grew and he became an amazing footballer."
Not only did Bale go on to win a match at Tottenham, he became one of the best players in the world. Redknapp was the manager who switched Bale from left-back to left-wing, which led to the Welshman exploding onto the scene in the 2010-11 Champions League campaign.
The 77-year-old was on the touchline when Bale blitzed Inter Milan at the San Siro by hammering in a hat-trick after Spurs went into half-time 4-0 and a man down. Redknapp added: "Over that period, he was the third-best player in the world, behind Messi and Ronaldo.
"He destroyed the best right-back in the world. Maicon was arguably the best right-back in the world at the time and Gareth almost finished his career. We brought them back to White Hart Lane and he destroyed them again. Maicon never recovered from that. Gareth just went on and got better and better. The whole world saw him that night and realised what a player that was.”
Ferguson went on to say that Bale was one of the ones that got away from him. The Scot said that he had the chance to sign Bale, who went on to join Real Madrid and win five Champions Leagues, three La Liga titles, a Copa del Rey and three Club World Cups, when he was still at Southampton.
In 2013, Ferguson said: "We were disappointed in Southampton at the time because we were first there, but they never came back to us. It was not the boy who turned us down, it was Southampton. Then a few weeks later he signed for Tottenham Hotspur. He (Bale) was a left-back when we tried to sign him. It wasn't until Harry (Redknapp) went to Tottenham that he converted him into a wide left player."