That’s exaggerated by the media. He and his family love the city. He seems to get along with his teammates just fine- they were pretty funny after the whole Wales Golf Madrid stuff. Marcelo got him a golf club for Secret Santa lol. In training he’s usually laughing with his fellow players. He and Zidane cooled, IMO, because ZZ got tired of not knowing which Bale would show up on the pitch. Which, fair. Is he gonna be Liverpool ‘18 Bale or Manchester City 2020 Bale? At least with Lucas Vasquez, you know what you’re getting.

Like you say, a lot of it is poor social media and marketing. He didn’t do what Kroos & others did, publicly trying to speak Spanish. He never ‘campaigned’ to win over the Madrid public or journalists, which was probably a strategic mistake. Maybe because media in the UK isn’t so closely connected to the clubs; in Spain what the media says about you matters, in a club politics sense. The media was always more likely to go after him, as a foreign player (plus his huge wages and transfer fee). They’ll almost always prefer a Spaniard who can play the same position. Someone pointed out all sorts of articles criticizing Marcelo once Reguilon appeared. Not that Marcelo was immune from criticism. But one notices that the non-Spaniards are treated a bit differently.