I loved how he came on and played with rage- Santiago Solari on Gareth Bale

The Welsh international scored from the spot to get the win but refused to celebrate it with his team-mates.

In the 2-1 away win over Levante, Real Madrid needed two spot kicks to earn the three points in La Liga. Goals from Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale sealed the deal for the reigning European champions as they were enough to hold down a confident Levante side. The game ended with both the teams being a man short as Nacho was sent off at the 88th minutes and Ruben two minutes before.

Los Blancos boss Santiago Solari was delighted by the game, especially with the performance of Gareth Bale. Bale started the game on the bench and the coach remained ecstatic as Bale played with rage in the win. He seemed unhappy with his reduced role for the team as he refused to celebrate the winner of the night from the spot kick.

"He was happy in the dressing room because he scored," Solari said after the game. "I loved how he came on and played with rage. He won us the game and did a great job. I thought he had a fantastic match."

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Solari denied any that there are any tensions in the team, he said, "You (the media) have more eyes than me. What I saw was how hard he worked on the pitch. He gave us the victory. If you score the goals, you can celebrate as you want."

Despite the average performance by the Spanish giants, the manager insisted that they look to find the positives from every game. "The positive thing was how we worked in this game. It's a very complicated fixture, but we played a very serious match. We could have scored earlier with Vinicius and the result would have been more substantial," he said.

Gareth Bales has scored a total of 12 goals in overall 31 appearances in all competitions this season. He has not started the last two games and it is yet to be seen how the Argentine boss plans to use him.

Real Madrid have a stern test to face now, they will host Barcelona in the Copa del Rey semi-final second leg having an 1-1 aggregate in hand.