Gareth Bale has had a miserable season at Real Madrid - leading to claims he has fallen out of love with football.
The Welshman is pondering his next career move with talk of a return to the Premier League to escape his Spanish nightmare.
He has also opened up on life as a professional footballer as part of a new BT Sport documentary, State of Play, set to premiere on Wednesday May 29.
Bale has revealed how professional players resemble "robots" as they follow a methodical routine - but he insists the sacrifice is worth it given the short shelf-life of a career at the highest level.
Bale said: "Yeah definitely because as a professional athlete – especially in a team environment – you don’t get to choose your schedule, maybe like a golf or a tennis player.
"So we’re kind of just robots. We’re told where to be, when to be there, what time we have to eat, what time we have to go to the coach. It’s kind of like you lose your life in a way. You’re kind of just told what to do.
"You don’t get to choose what you want to do, when you want to do it. So yeah, I can completely understand why he said that.
"But on another point, I think a career in football’s so short, sometimes you just have to sacrifice it.
"Some people think it’s worth it and some people think it’s not and yeah, everyone knows when it’s time to retire and obviously that was the right time for (friend Lewin Nyatanga) to do that and he’s happy."
Bale also revealed how his greatest memories of the game came as a child, without the weight of expectation.
He added: "When you’re a kid you have no thoughts in your mind, you can just enjoy with your friends, having a laugh.
"When you come to the elite level there’s all sorts of pressures, there’s expectations, there’s people talking negatively all the time and yeah, it loses that childlike feeling.
"I guess it’s natural for pretty much most sports to be honest."
