PHOTOS: World's Most Expensive Footballer And Girlfriend Revealed

Gareth Bale's parents, Frank and Debbie, probably never dreamt their only son would become the world's most expensive footballer. Scroll down for photos...

There were many surreal moments during Real Madrid's ceremonial unveiling yesterday of 24-year-old Bale, the former Tottenham Hotspur winger whose world-recordfeeeclipsed even that paid four years ago for his brilliant new teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo.

But his family's self-conscious ascent to a purpose-built stage in front of an over-excited crowd of 40,000 at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, where they smiled sheepishly for a huge battery of cameras, was the most gloriously unlikely of them all.
Especially as the splendidly motley Bale family occupied the space just vacated by the Spanish club's sleek and pampered multi-millionaire directors.
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez stayed where he was though.

The flamboyant construction billionaire manifestly tried to look as if Frank Bale, a former school caretaker, was his new best friend.
It would have been a priceless spectacle, except of course that the proceedings came with a price very firmly attached: £86 million.

Even by Real Madrid's extravagant — and in Spain's current economic climate, somewhat grotesque — standards, that is a great deal of money to pay for one man.

When asked if he was worth it, Bale sidestepped the issue saying that playing for Real Madrid would feel like a dream fulfilled – 'whether for a penny or whatever it was'.

Bale's girlfriend Emma, the childhood sweetheart to whom he dedicates each goal by making a heart shape with his hands, also seems to have had a makeover in readiness for the relentlessly intense scrutiny of the 'Madridistas'.
In Britain, she has stayed out of the limelight, and has been described as 'homely'.