Our man in Madrid
Jude Bellingham was always destined for stardom, but after a triumphant debut season in La Liga, can he inspire England to glory in Germany?
Boris Streubel – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images
- Giles Tremlett
Published: Thursday, 13 June 2024 at 1:44 pm
Will this prove to be the summer of Jude Bellingham? Widely hailed as England’s best footballer, the Real Madrid attacking midfielder, who stunned fans of the Spanish champions this season with match-winning performances and 19 La Liga goals, has barely played in his home country since leaving Birmingham for Germany, aged 17, in 2020.
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A couple of weeks ago, that changed. On 1 June, Real Madrid faced Bellingham’s former club Borussia Dortmund at Wembley in the Champions League final and won 2–0, with the Englishman notching a crucial assist for the second goal. Now the 20-year-old has joined his England team-mates for their Euro 2024 preparations – and a long Bellingham summer is set to allow fans of the Three Lions to judge something that Madridistas are already convinced of: that he’s the next great thing in world football.
Jude Bellingham with the Champions League trophy at Wembley, after winning it with Real Madrid in his debut season. Getty Images
To many, Bellingham remains an enigma. For a talented English youngster to leave his home country and perhaps not return until his best playing days are over is almost unthinkable. Yet when Bellingham moved from Borussia Dortmund to Real Madrid for €103 million last summer, it was, in his own words, “a no-brainer”. The policeman’s son from Stourbridge had grown up watching the storied Madrid club’s El Clásicos duels with Barcelona. Real Madrid, he declared on arrival, was “the greatest club in the history of the game”. The Spanish club matched Bellingham’s ambition and the self-belief he had demonstrated as the Bundesliga player of the year. “He is the oldest 19-year-old in the world,” Dortmund coach Edin Terzic had said before waving him off to Madrid.
Real Madrid can intimidate new players; even David Beckham struggled there at first. Bellingham, however, seemed more excited than overwhelmed. “It’s just something you don’t expect, to be able to play for a team like this,” he said.
And Real legends were equally excited to meet their new star player. “Can you speak Spanish?” asked Zinedine Zidane, former Real player and coach and perhaps the greatest French player ever, when he ambled into a dressing room to meet the club’s new star prior to the pair filming an advert for Adidas in a clip posted on Instagram. “Un poco [a little bit],” came the reply from Real Madrid’s new boy.
Bellingham was signed to complete a posse of youngsters ushering in a new Galácticos era. Players like Vinicius Júnior, Rodrygo and Eduardo Camavinga are all 23 or under. “Hard-working lads,” he says. “Whenever it clicks, it’s kind of beautiful.” He is already a leader. On 12 May they paraded the La Liga trophy through Madrid after their easiest run in half a century, thanks in no small part to 19 Bellingham goals.
Bellingham after scoring for Birmingham City as a teenager. Getty
Expansive and competitive on the pitch, Bellingham is discreet off it. He shuns the glitzy nightlife that consumed previous Real Madrid stars and is ignored by the paparazzi. Instead, he is occasionally seen with friends in cafeterias or restaurants, dealing politely with fans who sidle up to him. Yet the joyful panache with which he dons Louis Vuitton suits to receive awards hints at something more extrovert lurking below the polite, controlled surface.
He is also gathering friends. When he posted a picture with his mother Denise on Instagram to celebrate winning La Liga in May, Real Madrid players reacted with lines of red hearts. Rumours that he is dating a glamorous Dutch influencer remain just that. Spaniards are barely interested in footballers’ wives and girlfriends.
The Bellingham family are as much a team as Real Madrid, though their human resources are far more stretched. Denise plays a key role supporting her son, moving first to Dortmund and then to Madrid with him. She is reported to occasionally drop him at training sessions in his £155,000 BMW XM and to help administer a swelling bank account. They have moved into La Finca, a well-patrolled, exclusive community favoured by Real Madrid players.
Jude’s only sibling, his 18-year-old brother Jobe, plays for Sunderland and has turned out for all of England’s youth teams since he was an under-16. Their father Mark moved to Wearside to accompany him, and Jude admits the distance sometimes weighs on him.
Family and football came together from the start. Mark Bellingham was a Midlands non-league legend, netting more than 700 goals for various clubs while rising to the rank of sergeant in the West Midlands police. He also coached kids, so Jude and Jobe spent many Saturdays and Sundays at his clubs. Unlike other prodigies, however, there was no pressure.
To begin with, Jude preferred playing tag with other kids to chasing a ball. “I’d go to these sessions and just pick grass and pick flowers and I’d make little daisy chains and give them to my mum,” he admits. “My parents never forced me into doing anything, as long as I was a good lad and took care of other people.” At the age of six, however, he caught the bug. Watching his dad celebrate goals was one reason.
From left: Denise, Jude, Jobe and Mark Bellingham on the red carpet prior to the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards 2021 Alamy
Denise keeps him rooted. In Germany, after he moved from childhood club Birmingham City, her role was as important as that of his coaches. “Staying calm, staying cool, being a good example to my team-mates and trying to lead and stuff like that,” he explained at the time. “A lot of that comes from my mum.”
Keeping a balanced life off the pitch can prove tougher than shining on it. “Without my mum, sometimes I’d get too low with the lows or too high with the highs, and I stay pretty humble because I’ve got her around,” he has said. On social-media birthday posts she is his “queen”.
Staying calm, being a good example… that comes from my mum
Jude Bellingham
The famously level-headed Mark and Denise Bellingham instilled qualities that have impressed everywhere. Dortmund’s former assistant coach René Marić found implacable ambition combined with thoughtfulness: “He doesn’t just come up with the right answers, he also asks the right questions,” he said. Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti is most surprised by Bellingham’s steely self-confidence. “He is really professional, really serious,” he says. England manager Gareth Southgate agrees: “He’s had that since he walked through the door.”
Real Madrid fans are used to seeing Bellingham, his arms stretched wide, celebrating goals. This season that included three in the team’s two El Clásico victories over Barcelona. Newspapers are running out of epithets. “Lord Bellingham”, “Sir Bellingham” and “Hey Jude!” are overworked. Critics have also emerged. “It’s as if Bellingham comes next after Jesus Christ!” complained Carles Fité, a Spanish TV commentator who accuses him of pointless, crowd-pleasing antics.
Jude Bellingham doing his now-trademark celebration for Real Madrid. Getty
A competitive spirit occasionally blazes too brightly. “It’s a f****ing goal!” Bellingham shouted at referee Jesús Gil Manzano after he blew the final whistle seconds before the midfielder headed in against Valencia in March. An instant red card saw him banned for two matches. As a boy, Bellingham admits he had to be taught to shake the other team’s hands if they won. “If I’d lose, I’d be a nightmare,” he said.
Bellingham is one of a trio of players deemed the world’s most valuable, at €180 million each, according to the football data website Transfermarkt. The others are strikers Kylian Mbappé, who is set to join Real Madrid from Paris Saint-Germain this summer, and Erling Haaland of Manchester City.
He has been voted La Liga’s player of the season and won the Kopa Trophy for the world’s best player aged under 21 and the Golden Boy award for European under-21s. When Toni Kroos, the German who has anchored Real Madrid’s midfield for a decade, announced that he was retiring, Bellingham expressed his “absolute pleasure to enjoy your football and personality”. Kroos was quick to reply: “You are more than ready to take over!”
Real Madrid have won the Champions League a record 15 times now that Bellingham helped the club add to that tally at Wembley. Just over a fortnight later, on Sunday 16 June, England face Serbia in Gelsenkirchen in their opening match at Euro 2024. The Bellingham summer awaits…
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Giles Tremlett is a former Madrid correspondent for The Economist and The Guardian
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Giles Tremlett
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