Savouring the prophetic poise of Jude Bellingham
At 31, my football-shirt-wearing days should be over. I’m not a kid anymore, and there’s an unshakeable paunch that excludes me from the IPA-swilling, bubble-gum-vaping hipster class. Wearing a Tranmere shirt unironically is now beyond me, as is donning the 2018 Nigeria jersey to an indie gig at the student union bar. My sartorial relevance elapsed with my propensity to care.
That said, for the first time in more than a decade, I’m actively fighting the urge to buy a replica shirt. A Jude Bellingham England shirt, emblazoned with the iconic #10, to be precise. Why? Because the prodigy has reawakened the kid in me by hauling our nation to a historic World Cup semi-final. Moreover, the entire Jude Bellingham story – the Jude Bellingham aura, kismet and iconography – is infectiously uplifting. Even my cold, cynical heart has been moved by the miasma.
This is a 23-year-old kid from the West Midlands who has won the Champions League as a Real Madrid galáctico, wearing the hallowed #5 bequeathed by Zinedine Zidane, while carrying his country to rarefied heights.
This is a humble lad, suave and photogenic, who already ranks third on the Three Lions’ all-time World Cup goalscoring chart and will likely become England’s most-capped player before he turns 30.
This is a twentysomething talisman with a megawatt smile who, this tournament alone, has notched six goals of increasing importance, including back-to-back knockout-stage braces – a feat matched only by Sándor Kocsis, Pelé, Garrincha and Diego Maradona.
The phenomenon is enchanting.
With Bellingham, as with many luminaries of his ilk, the raw talent is mesmerising. At 6-foot-1, he is an athletic freak, lithe yet robust, agile yet stout. He can play a multitude of positions, with the tenacity of a ball-winning defensive midfielder, the playmaking of a box-to-box general, and the clinical finishing of a powerful second striker.
Jude plays with both feet, melding languid flair with crunching tenacity, and is also an aerial threat with an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. He drives his team forward with graft and guile, skill and speed. He is the complete player, and he does things in real life that I cannot do in video games.
In Bellingham, I see flickers of England’s greatest ever players in the aggregate. Jude has the bite and thrust of Gerrard with more poise. He has the attacking instincts of Lampard with far superior fitness. He has the fire and fury of Rooney with more grace and contextual awareness. The fearless flamboyance of Gascoigne is redolent, as is the clutch charisma of Beckham. It is difficult to recall a more talented English footballer – in abstract pure ability, and increasingly in tangible production.
Just look at the miraculous 95th minute overhead kick against Slovakia at Euro 2024, where Jude – “Who else?” – saved England from elimination. Look, too, at his indomitable two-goal display in the Azteca, against co-hosts Mexico, in this very World Cup. And look at his latest heroics versus Norway, where two further goals sealed a last-four rendezvous with Lionel Messi and Argentina.
The bigger the game, the better Bellingham performs.
No stage is too daunting.
Jude is chronically unflustered.
Such is his comfort with the unprecedented, in fact, the football cognoscenti have become thoroughly desensitised to his greatness. Such is his ease with the alien, seasoned observers take it for granted. Such is his composure amid folklore, his self-assurance while rewriting history, people overlook the very foundation of his genius.
Bellingham makes the extraordinary look ordinary, the incomparable seem normal. He takes it all in stride, as if destiny mapped his course from Stourbridge to the Bernabéu to Wembley and beyond. There is a cool omnipotence to his ascent, a prophetic poise to his iconoclasm. “Who writes your scripts?” Bellingham was once famously asked. “I do,” he replied. (1) Touché.
At 8, Bellingham joined the academy of Birmingham City, his local club. At 10, he prophesised in a school yearbook that he wanted to play for England. (2) At 16, he made his professional debut for Birmingham. At 17, he debuted for the national team, manifesting the quintessential dream. Then came a move to Borussia Dortmund, a retired number back home, and a swift surge to the pinnacle with Real Madrid, the grandest club of all.
Throughout, fate has loomed as a guiding force. Jude’s father, Mark, worshipped Zidane and regularly wore a Real shirt bearing his name. One day, the youngster asked his dad about the imperious #5, and Mark told his son to study Zizu on YouTube. Jude did just that, and came to idolise Zidane. (3) Then, he followed in his footsteps, rising with celestial self-assurance to wear that same sacred digit while hoisting the European Cup, a rite of Madridian passage.
In that regard, Jude Bellingham has an amazing ability to conceive of the most preposterous achievements at the peak of elite football then make them reality with supreme self-confidence and a minimum of fuss. He doesn’t just dream of astounding accomplishments; he believes, wholeheartedly, that he will experience them as some sort of divine birthright. Others yearn to be great; Jude knows he is great. And he embraces that conviction with rare aplomb.
For a young, Black superstar to be so comfortable in his own brilliance – stoking it, not shrinking from it; making himself bigger, not smaller; refusing to apologise for his own authentic soul – is a galvanising triumph unthinkable to admonished trailblazers like John Barnes, Ian Wright and Luther Blissett. English football has never had a Black megastar of Jude’s magnitude, and his unflinching acceptance of that mantle is endlessly refreshing.
Bellingham also seems immune to the kind of scandal-seeking press intrusion that has wrecked many a bygone phenom. Articulate and intelligent, Jude is a communications savant. He plays the game and uses media attention to fuel his own hyperbole. He has the audacity to play God with his own legacy and the skill to pull it off. That he came of age in Germany and Spain cannot be coincidental.
Alas, for a boy so beloved, and at every moment watched, Jude Bellingham is still routinely misunderstood. I have questioned his attitude in the past, accusing him of sulking and pouting, but by my own admission, that was a misunderstanding of his mystique and a misrepresentation of what makes him tick. I still believe he is incompatible with Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Jr. at Real, where egos poison the alchemy, but I think José Mourinho should build around Jude and get rid of the other two. He is just that good.
Thomas Tuchel, Bellingham’s international coach, has already figured that out. For all the discourse around Harry Kane being England’s transformative talent, Jude is our driving force. And like all transcendent athletes, from LeBron to Shohei to Cristiano, Jude needs a chip on his shoulder to reach optimal performance. Tuchel knows that, and he understands how to get the best out of Bellingham – by lighting a fire underneath him with esoteric jabs. Hence empty talk of Morgan Rogers shunting Jude to the bench. Hence provocative soundbites that push the right buttons. Hence a powerful symbiosis disguised as a narky tête-à-tête.
Yes, a lot can still go wrong – in this tournament, and in Jude Bellingham’s career writ large. With youth comes a volatile range of potential outcomes. Bellingham has dealt with niggly injuries and loss of form throughout his ascent, including this season, and there is a world in which he becomes more Dele Alli than Bobby Charlton. Jude looks and feels different, though, to all those who have gone before. He has the emotional intelligence and innate decorum, matched with the preternatural ability, to harness storms as energy while building a vaunted empire. He is a paragon, in many respects, tailormade for this new era, and we must savour his effortless dominance while it percolates before us.
I, like you, have no idea what will happen against Argentina. Jude’s fate in this World Cup is, likewise, undecided. I will be watching and cheering, though, feeling things I thought I could no longer feel. One player has reawakened passion – genuine passion – in this most jaded football fan, and I want to see him go all the way. I want to see him win it all. And if he does – if we do – I will buy that Jude Bellingham shirt. After all, it will only grow in value, a timeless icon of a unique zenith.
Sources
1. ITV Football. [Online] July 1, 2024. https://x.com/itvfootball/status/1807677770488803663.
2. BBC. [Online] November 23, 2022. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-63731038.
3. Johnson, Jack. talkSPORT. [Online] May 8, 2024. https://talksport.com/football/1858944/jude-bellingham-shirt-reason-real-madrid-dad-zidane/.