The World Cup Has A SERIOUS Jude Bellingham Problem

It feels like 2024 all over again because Bellingham is back to being that guy. He's dragging England forward once again in a major tournament. The ultimate big game player. Thankfully we've got Jude Bellingham again, that special something that. From the very first match, Bellingham set the tone. He scored in England's 4-2 win over Croatia while also becoming the youngest European player ever to appear in four major international tournaments. Then he scored versus Panama. In the knockout rounds against co-host Mexico at legendary Estadio Azteca, Bellingham delivered one of the performances of the tournament. He scored twice in just 98 seconds, producing the third fastest brace in World Cup history. And then came Norway. England were in trouble against one of the tournament's surprising stories. But once again, Bellingham answered the call. Whenever England have needed someone to rescue them, Jude somehow finds a way. But what makes Bellingham's tournament so special is that on top of the goals, he's doing everything else too. He had a goal-saving clearance versus Mexico. He's tracking back, pressing from the front. Under Thomas Tuchel, he's been given the freedom to roam all over the pitch. One minute he's making a crunching tackle, the next he's gliding past the defender like a winger. Then moments later, he's arriving in the box to finish like an elite poacher. He plays with the confidence and composure of someone who's been on this stage for a decade. We all forgot about this version of Bellingham because we haven't seen it for two years ever since Mbappe joined Real Madrid. When the turtle arrived, the first player who had to be sacrificed was Jude Bellingham. In an effort to get the best out of the Frenchman, Jude was pushed back to a deeper role in midfield. What's funny is that if I told you a few years ago that Bellingham would be underutilized as a central midfielder, you would have laughed in my face because throughout his career, that's where he had been mainly played. At Birmingham, initially, he started out wide. Reportedly, he was played there to help him settle in. But soon, it was obvious that he was far more impactful in the middle of the park. He wore the number 22 on his back, not because it was available, but because it meant something. Jude wanted to be a complete midfielder. I'm not making this up btw, that's in his own words. He picked that number because he didn't want to be stuck to a certain role. He didn't just want to be a number 6 who defended or a number 10. He wanted to be a player who could do everything. Track back, make tackles, carry the ball forward. But he wasn't the goals and assist machine we are seeing now. Now of course, it's hard to get goal contributions when you're playing on a team that's just trying to avoid relegation. He did get 4 goals in 45 games and even set up a late equalizer against Charlton Athletic. It was obvious though that he was something special, hence why Birmingham did something almost unheard of and retired his number 22 shirt. People laughed at the gesture when it happened but who's laughing now? In July of 2020, his fairytale at Birmingham came to an end. Borussia Dortmund came calling, paying £25M to sign him, a record fee for someone that age. It was a massive step up. But Jude wasn't there to just wait and learn. He was ready to play and immediately help out the black and yellow. Right from his first game in the German Cup he made an impact. He scored on his debut, becoming Dortmund's youngest ever goal scorer in a competitive match. It was a perfect start. What really stood out was how he played. He wasn't used as a flashy number 10 or a defensive midfielder. Instead he was played as an 8, a box to box midfielder right in the heart of everything. As a midfielder, Bellingham ran the game. One moment he was winning tackles deep in his own half, the next he was bursting forward to create chances at the other. His work rate was crazy. He would cover every blade of grass. At the time Dortmund had a revolving door of managers. They went through managers the way Bellingham's girl goes through athletes. But no matter who was in charge, Bellingham was always a regular starter. Even as a teenager, their midfield looked better when he was in it. His energy, composure and aggression made him stand out. And that was very obvious when Bellingham scored a brilliant goal against Manchester City in the Champions League quarter final. He was only 17 at the time, but he just looked like he belonged on the biggest stage. That same season, he helped Dortmund win the DFB Pokal, lifting his first major trophy. And as the years went on, his influence only grew. He wasn't some sort of work rate merchant. He did so much more than that. He wanted the ball at his feet. He was controlling games. At times he was even wearing the captain's armband. I'm the first English teenager to captain a team in the Champions League. What does that mean? How much did you enjoy the role? Yeah, I think it comes, you know, quite naturally, to be honest. That's crazy to think about. A teenage kid captaining a club like Borussia Dortmund. And it wasn't like he was some sort of guy that just came through the academy. He was a foreigner that had come from England to Germany. In the 2023 season, Bellingham's stats actually went up again. A young man who, game by game, gets better and better. Even though he was playing strictly as a box-to-box central midfielder. He wasn't playing as a false nine. He wasn't a holding midfielder. He wasn't even a number 10 at this point. He scored 14 goals and got 7 assists and played practically every single minute. Sadly though, his efforts weren't enough to help Dortmund win the Bundesliga. Despite it being a tight title race for once in Germany, Dortmund crumbled as per usual and Jude couldn't do anything because he was watching from the sidelines as he was injured. How often Dortmund choke in the Bundesliga really needs to be studied. Even with that heartbreak, Bellingham had done more than enough to prove his quality. At just 19, he was voted the Bundesliga Player of the Season. He also won the Golden Boy award in 2023. Bellingham had become the full package. He could put in a strong tackle but he was calm on the ball. He was also fearless going forward, whether he was scoring it himself or creating for others. A true box-to-box engine. The biggest clubs in the world were watching and one of them was Real Madrid. Just like that, the boy who left Birmingham for Dortmund was on his way to the biggest stage of all. At Madrid, something changed. Under Carlo Ancelotti, the eyebrow man, Jude was no longer asked to play as a traditional box-to-box midfielder like he had done at Birmingham and Dortmund. Instead, he was given a new role. A free-roaming attacking midfielder. A mix between a false 9 and a number 10. It was risky but Ancelotti believed that Jude had all the traits required to be good in that position. It was the same position and role that he had used Kaka'in in his Milan sides in the mid to late 2000s. And he was right. Bellingham exploded out of the gates. In his first 13 matches for Madrid, he scored 13 goals. Two more goals and he would have gotten Benzema's favorite number. These were ridiculous stats for a midfielder, especially one new to Spanish football. Since Madrid didn't have a striker, Bellingham was the one who stepped up and became the main man. People wanted to downplay his goals to just happens. But number one, the goals looked easy because his positioning was immaculate. He was able to get into the right spaces and pop up at the right time. And then of course he was very clinical in front of goal. His last minute winner in his very first home game at the Bernabeu sent fans into a frenzy. In a time where people spent a hundred mil on players and they flopped, Bellingham was showing what a big money move is supposed to get you. World-class quality. Someone that can make a difference. And I think that the system, and this is why you have to give a lot of credit to managers, the system that Ancelotti put for him. 4-3-1-2. He answered the call. And that was proven in El Clasico. In October of 2023, Madrid were losing to Barcelona. Then Bellingham, he took over. First he blasted a screamer from 25 yards into the top corner. It's a great finish, but can I criticize Tristachou? Then later in stoppage time, he sneaked into the box to score again. A classical winning brace on your debut, that's the stuff of legends. He had helped complete the comeback. Playing in this new attacking role gave Bellingham the room to show off his full game. He wasn't just stuck deep in midfield anymore. He was combining with Vini, creating chances and scoring goals. Yet he didn't forget the dirty work. He still dropped back when needed, helping his team defensively. By the end of the season, he had scored over 20 goals in all competitions. He had helped Madrid win the double, Champions League and La Liga. In fact, in La Liga, he was Real Madrid's best player. He was carrying the team on his back, especially when Vini was injured. He made the Ballon d'Or podium, won the Copa trophy, becoming the first Englishman to actually ever win that award. People were now mentioning him in the same breath as Zidane. Maybe that's why Bellingham started to tuck in his shirt. Or maybe he saw Roger win the Ballon d'Or with a tucked in shirt and thought it'll add to his PR. It wasn't just hype though. He was actually earning it on the At one point, he had a better goal-scoring return in a debut season than Cristiano Ronaldo. He was scoring so many clutch goals that you couldn't just say he's getting lucky. In just one year, Bellingham had gone from a talented teenager to an actual global superstar. Football, however, is always evolving. And so did Bellingham's role at Real Madrid come the new season. Mbappe came, Kroos left, and Ancelotti decided to adjust the team. If you guys remember, Madrid started the season transitioning into a 4-3-3 with Mbappe as a striker and Bellingham as a deeper central midfielder. A very different system than the 4-4-2 diamond that Madrid used to win the double the season before. In the diamond, Bellingham was essentially a mix between a false 9 and a center attacking midfielder. If we look at his heat map, he was everywhere. But his main asset was to be in and around the box. That's where he was getting the majority of his goals. Since Madrid didn't have a traditional 9, there was plenty of space for the both sides of him were wingers that could create for him. If anyone tries to tell you that Bellingham is just a box crasher or a tap-in merchant, just know that they watched football through reels. Cause yes, he did camp in and around the box a lot, but he also scored a ton of goals from outside the box. He scored a bunch of goals just going on wonderful solo runs. He was like the English hooligan, doing everything because he had the complete freedom and space. He could do whatever he liked in the attacking third, and the stats reflected that. But with Mbappe now occupying the central forward spots, and Vini trying to do too much on the left wing, Jude's been basically pushed to the left-hand side of midfield, way deeper than before. He has to start his runs all the way from the back, cause he has to ensure that the team stays balanced. You want to see how much extra work Bellingham has to do now? Look at Madrid's Champions League loss to Milan. Mbappe up top was not making the runs that he was supposed to make, which forced Bellingham, who was playing far deeper than Mbappe, to make the runs that he should have been making as the striker. If Madrid lose the ball, it's pretty much always Bellingham sprinting back to stop the counterattacks, especially given that Mr. 10 times more and Mr. sometimes I'm too competitive, don't want to track back. At times, Bellingham is just shoehorned into the left-mid spot when Madrid are out of possession, just so that Ancelotti can try and get the best out of Vini and Mbappe. The changes in tactics start to show not just on the pitch, but on the way that people were now talking about Jude Bellingham. That's always been the focus, since Mbappe is their new shiny toy, they're willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone to get the best out of him. In the first season at Madrid, he couldn't stop scoring. Literally every single week was just Bellingham doing this bird celebration. Game after game, you would hear Belly goal, Belly goal. To this day, it's still one of the best debut seasons I've ever seen. But fast forward and things look very different. The goals have slowed down. He isn't the one grabbing headlines. Now the spotlight was on Kylian Mbappe, the guy who loves the Lakers and LeBron James. The French superstar joined the team and naturally, all the cameras and praise follow him. Mbappe's getting the headlines, he's scoring the goal. Meanwhile, Jude is working harder than ever and getting half the recognition. Now to the average fan, it might seem like Bellingham has faded. And this makes sense, because a lot of the people that praise Bellingham don't actually watch games. They praised him when he scored and ignored all the other great things he did. So now that the goals have dried up, they think he's not the main story anymore. But that couldn't be further from the truth. Jude is still as important as ever, maybe even more so, because now he's doing the unseen work. At one point, Bellingham led all Real Madrid players in duels won, tackles made, and high intensity pressure. These stats are not the ones that are gonna get people an erection. It's not gonna get people excited. But it's some of the most important statistics to be a part of. It means he's working hard and diligently without the ball. When he was given the freedom to play in the position that he was so good in in 2024, Bellingham was still amazing. He popped out with goals against City and Atalanta in the Champions League. In late November and December, he scored in six consecutive games in La Liga. So he wasn't slowing down. In fact, he was doing more than what he did in 2024. Now he was scoring goals and doing even more defensive work. It flew under the radar because of two reasons. Number one, Madrid as a team were underperforming. I mean they just kept losing games. And then number two, our expectations for what Bellingham can achieve had been drastically changed based on how good he had been in his debut season. When he plays for England, he plays in the number 10 role and he's been fantastic. In the 2024 Euros, he played great. All the talk was about how bad Vini was for Brazil, then nobody noticed Bellingham had actually shown up for his national team. He was playing as an attacking midfielder in a 4-2-3-1 as opposed to Madrid's 4-4-2 diamond, but still he was as dominant as ever. With Southgate giving him the freedom to get forward, he was able to score and create while still doing what you expect from a midfielder like tackling, tracking back, etc. I mean the man scored a bicycle kick in the dying minutes of a knockout match to keep his country alive in a tournament and people were acting like he scored a tap-in or something. He was able to perform like this because he was playing as an attacking midfielder. And as you can see, the more Bellingham gets forward, the more freedom he has, the more he's going to reward you. Now Ancelotti had played him as a center attacking mid in a 4-2-3-1. Bellingham had succeeded individually and the team as a whole had performed much better. That's actually where most of his best games have happened, like his goal and assist against Girona, plus the performance he put on against Valencia. But then in the next game, Ancelotti would put Bellingham back at left midfield. It also doesn't help that there's no tempo dictating central midfielder behind Bellingham anymore. In 2024, Jude could push forward because Kroos was at the club. He could control the tempo of games, recycle the ball. He's no longer there and there's pretty much no other profile of midfielder at the club that can do that role. Jude could probably do it, obviously not as well as Kroos, he's not really a tempo dictating central midfielder, but the problem is the deeper you play Jude Bellingham, the more you are underutilizing him. And because of poor recruiting and lack of profiles, you end up asking Bellingham to do 100 different things. And he's well-rounded enough to do each of those tasks, but he's not going to be able to do each of them at the highest level possible. But when you give him freedom to get forward and his only focus is to score goals and create, then you get the best version of him. The one that we saw in 2024. The one that arguably deserved the Ballon d'Or. The truth is that Bellingham remained and remains the heartbeat of Real Madrid. Even if the headlines are now about others, everyone around the club knows his value. Whenever they grind out a win, you'll find Bellingham at the center of it all, making key interceptions, launching a counter that leads to a goal, and having the cover for teammates that are out of position. He has become a leader by example in the dressing room. He's always the first one to go and help the guy who missed the penalty. And in 2025, let's just say there was a lot of missed penalties. In terms of being a complete midfielder, there are few better than him. Real Madrid need to have Bellingham as the focal point of their attack. This is a player who should be involved in every aspect of play, not just running around like a chicken with his head cut off being a work rate merchant. Whether he's playing as a powerful number 8, or as a number 10, or something in between, Bellingham just keeps growing. And every single season, he's adding new layers to his game. And Madrid fans should be very excited because I believe his story is only just getting started. Now Real Madrid's struggles go so far beyond just Drew Bellingham. To see why this Madrid super team hasn't worked out yet, you gotta check out this video right here.