FOOTBALL: Gareth Bale’s World Cup endagered, Welsh star forced out of LAFC MLS semi-final with leg injury

Gareth Bale’s World Cup dreams may be in jeop­ardy as he miss­es LAFC’s MLS semi­fi­nals with injury.

The Wales cap­tain, 33, will lead his coun­try to its first World Cup tour­na­ment since 1958 in Qatar.

But with four weeks to go until the Drag­ons’ open­er against the Unit­ed States, he’s sweating.

Bale missed the moment of Thurs­day’s dra­mat­ic 3–2 win over Los Ange­les FC’s home­town rivals LA Galaxy.

He was in the stands to wit­ness a cru­cial win when Gior­gio Chielli­ni was sub­sti­tut­ed in the sec­ond half and Cris­t­ian Arango scored the win­ning goal in the 93rd minute.

Asked about Bale’s injury ahead of the World Cup, LAFC man­ag­er Steve Che­landro was pos­i­tive: “He should be back in train­ing soon, in the next few days.”

The next round should have the full list.” That is won­der­ful. From now on, we will have all options. ”

LAFC will face Austin or Dal­las in the MLS West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals on Octo­ber 30, and Bale is expect­ed to be available.

He played just five min­utes for the club after play­ing 90 min­utes for Wales against Poland in September.

Since his debut in July, he has made 12 appear­ances for the new world, start­ing just two of them.

Bale spent nine years at Real Madrid, win­ning the Cham­pi­ons League five times, but his con­tract expired this summer.

His final sea­son at the Whites saw him make just sev­en appearances.

How­ev­er, he saved his best form for inter­na­tion­al match­es, scor­ing deci­sive goals against Aus­tria and Ukraine to help Wales qual­i­fy for Qatar 2022.

Bale’s free-kick equal­ized for Cardiff.

Wales qual­i­fied for Group B along­side neigh­bors Eng­land, Iran and the Unit­ed States.