“I write the script,” said Jude Bellingham, “who else?” Confident in boasting that he rules England’s destiny at the Euros, the Madrid midfielder’s anguished look hid a colossal pride. He was speaking on television last Sunday night in Gelsenkirchen. His team had just qualified for the last 16 after he scored the 1-1 against Slovakia in the 95th minute to scrape by in extra time, after a fourth game as poor as the 1-0 against Serbia, the 1-1 with Denmark and the 0-0 with Slovenia. So unproductive in attacking plays that half the English fans had left the field with the virtual Slovak victory recorded on the scoreboard. They travelled to the most remote stadium in Germany, the worst in communication in the tournament, and what they had seen, once again, had made them think that it was not worth staying one more minute.
Until Sunday, Bellingham’s Euro script read like a nightmare. The man his sponsors are hailing as a future Ballon d’Or winner had produced one shot, one chance and one goal in three games. Against Slovenia, he hit rock bottom: zero shots, zero chances created, zero ball steals, just 12% of forward passes, 22% of duels won, the worst ratio in the team, and the most balls lost, 16 in the opponent’s possession. It didn’t matter. His manager, Gareth Southgate, clung to one idea. “Jude is one of the best players in England’s history,” he said. The team had to play for him.
Stones, Walker, Mainoo, Rice, Palmer, Warthon, Eze, Foden, Saka and Harry Kane are probably the most gifted group of English players for combination play since the squad that lifted the World Cup in 1966. They all have the ability to link up through touch and constant movement. They proved to be deep and devastating at City, Arsenal, Palace and Bayern. Yet Southgate has designed the team to channel play down the flanks and all end up in crosses. It is against the nature of his most talented players. It is strange to see Kane and Foden playing one-twos through the middle in a structure designed to have the ball go down the flanks and end up on Bellingham’s head. “England,” mused one Arsenal analyst, “are the Vienna Philharmonic, but they only play Paquito the chocolatier”
Sources familiar with the results of the stress tests and lactate analyses carried out on Bellingham since his arrival at Madrid indicate that the footballer is a battleship. For better and for worse. At 21 years of age, the combination of mass, weight, bone density and muscular capacity make him a bomb in the opposition area, while preventing him from moving around the midfield with the continuity and application that the midfielder’s job requires. He is not a long-distance runner and this conditions his game. His successful passes were limited to 26, less than any of his teammates deployed in the wide area: Rice, 80; Stones, 121; Mainoo, 65; Saka, 43; and Foden 35. Against Slovakia, as in the rest of the Euro Cup matches, he ended up leaving the midfield to go into the area to exploit his hunting instinct. The instinct that keeps him away from defenders and notices lines of marking, rebounds, passes, headers and aerial balls before anyone else. At the level of the best pigeon-eaters.
UEFA files on obscene gestures
He finished twice. One was a goal. The saving goal. It happened just as Benito Floro would have projected, the coach who prophesied that throw-ins, the only regulatory action that authorizes a field player to pass the ball with his hand, would be the future of football. Walker shot from the sideline into the area, Toney headed in at the near post and Bellingham took a step back to confuse Vavro, his marker, before finishing off with a bicycle kick. “We had rehearsed it,” the player confessed, after the feat. “We have managed to create chaos,” boasted Southgate, generating as much confusion in rivals as in his own players.
It was Bellingham’s sixth goal in stoppage time this season. It was as decisive as the ones he scored against Braga, Union Berlin, Napoli, Celta, Getafe, Barça and Serbia. “I know what I can do in those moments, no matter what people say,” he said, visibly indignant. “I’ve shown it with Madrid this season and I’ve done it for England before.”
“You’re 30 seconds away from going home and you’ve had to listen to all the rubbish they say about you and you feel like you’ve let people down,” he lamented, referring to the experts who have criticized him on English television. “Playing for England should be the proudest moment of your career, but too often it is very difficult. People talk too much. “There really is high-intensity pressure.”
This Monday UEFA opened a file to determine whether Bellingham addressed the stands, or the Slovakia bench, making obscene gestures, as some videos seem to reflect. The player posted on the social network X that it was just a joke with some friends who were in the stands.
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