The trouble with being blessed with the special level of anticipation that Real Madrid‘s Jude Bellingham possesses is that it’s not just assists, goal opportunities and defensive gaps you can spot coming, but also the ugly threat from which your team is going to suffer during a difficult upcoming season.
Last year, the England midfielder was a classic hero figure for Madrid: he came, he saw, he conquered. Their hero of the Clásicos too, he scored, they won, they celebrated. Bellingham put Barcelona to the sword: three matches, one assist, two added-time winning goals, and three trophies (LaLiga, Spanish Supercopa and Champions League) to show for it.
Your remember those glorious goals of his, right? The first: a thunder-blaster at Barcelona’s Olympic stadium, his side trailing 1-0, bursting the net from thirty metres out. The second: that same afternoon, Bellingham made a canny late run from outside the box to the centre-forward position, stabbing the ball home from Luka Modric‘s deflected cross. Then, from a Catalan point of view, the third was a real heartbreaker: a right-wing cross from Lucas Vázquez, a clever late run from Bellingham, and a back-post goal smashed into the roof of Marc-André ter Stegen‘s net off his weaker foot. It all felt like a Hollywood script.
My point about Bellingham’s gloomy, foreboding vision of the future is that it came way back then, just after winning his fourth Madrid trophy (in 12 months) when he and his teammates heralded the arrival of Kylian Mbappé, and a new season, by winning the UEFA Super Cup in Warsaw last August, overpowering Atalanta 2-0.
I met him backstage as I came out of a mini-studio where we’d just done a winner’s TV interview with Mbappé, and Bellingham stopped for a brief chat. We talked about the mean-spirited, ill-judged treatment he’d received from sections of the English football media, and online, during England’s grimly determined attempt to wrest Euro 2024 away from Spain. Wrapping up the chat, I said: “Anyway Jude, congratulations on the first trophy — now for six more?” (They were jousting for LaLiga, the Copa del Rey, two Supercopas, the Champions League and two world titles.) His reply: “Yeah, and the 190 games which we’ve got to get through in order to do that!”
The message was crystal clear from the young, ultra-fit man who’d just “enjoyed” scandalously short summer holidays before diving into a competitive final after four days of preseason training. It was deliberately exaggerated to make a point: that players are overburdened, they are asked to play too much, to travel too much and they don’t get nearly enough time to refresh tired minds and limbs … they’re going to suffer.
His overall stats this season compared to last look puny at first glance, but in context, they’re not at all bad. Bellingham has lost defensive resources behind him — Nacho has gone, Éder Militão and Dani Carvajal are out with long-term injuries — and lost solidity and creativity alongside him in the departed Toni Kroos, plus there’s a new goal-sheriff in town in Mbappé, the player who receives the most passes from Bellingham in LaLiga. All of which combines to suggest that scoring eight and giving eight assists in LaLiga, compared to 19 and six in 2023-24, isn’t unhealthy. Nor is the equivalent in the Champions League, scoring three and assisting three compared to four and five respectively last term.
Where I think the drop-off is startling, and where I think there’s evidence of how the global football calendar is punishing the truly exceptional players, is in some of the physical stats. Last season, Bellingham was a behemoth: he ran more, jumped more, timed his movement exquisitely, added physical and athletic over-performance to a whip-crack smart mind, technical repertoire and ferocious winning attitude. Rivals couldn’t keep pace. This season, he’s still driving this Real Madrid team, but others, who play and travel less and who have more time to rest, refresh and recuperate, are not only closing the gap, but are overtaking.
So, this season in LaLiga, Bellingham is the fourth-ranked Madrid player who wins the ball back in the opponents half, but he ranks 30th across LaLiga. In average number of sprints, he’s fifth at Madrid, 33rd across the division. Average speed: 14th Madrid/156th LaLiga. High intensity sprints: fifth Madrid/52nd in LaLiga. Aerial duels: ninth Madrid/127th LaLiga. Aerial duels won: 13th Madrid/127th LaLiga. The calendar, the non-stop travelling, the lack of disconnect time and the lack of rest — they’re presenting a bill that Madrid haven’t yet been able to pay.
What I can tell you is that despite his Italian boss loving the vast range of things his English phenomenon does well, the truth is that Ancelotti, in light of what Madrid are lacking this season, would have preferred Bellingham to be a tactically disciplined, more ordered midfield presence compared to the go-everywhere-attack every-situation “hero” Bellingham has tried to be when the team is under pressure. It’s something he has tried to get through to his young prodigy, though not wholly successfully.
Having shared that, let me make one thing abundantly clear. Bellingham remains an extraordinary footballer and competitor. It’s not just Madrid who are blessed to have him on their books; it’s hugely to LaLiga’s overall benefit that he’s plying his trade in Spain and, I emphasise, this column isn’t intended to criticise or belittle him. The point is that with a make-or-break match to come this weekend — one that, if won, could most certainly launch Bellingham and teammates to retaining their Spanish title — there have been important underlying trends that not only have gone against him, but that he fully anticipated.
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The two iconic moments to show how he’s felt about all this — and how it has, unquestionably, affected him negatively — come from the defeat at Arsenal and the Copa del Rey final loss.
After the stunning 3-0 loss in London, he admitted with disarming frankness: “I think we were nowhere near it, that’s the fact, and Arsenal were really good. To be honest they could have had way more, we were lucky to get away with three. We are disappointed in ourselves, there’s nothing we can draw on from external excuses: we’ve got to look solely at ourselves. These are similar themes to what’s happened all season when we’ve lost, but on a larger scale. We’re going to have to address it.”
Then there was the turning point in the Copa del Rey final. It was 0-0 in the 28th minute; Madrid on the break, Bellingham tried to send Vinícius Júnior through on goal and instead saw his pass intercepted by Pau Cubarsí at full stretch. The loose ball falls to Pedri: Bellingham is aghast, putting both hands to his head, but instead of turning to chase Pedri — who launches a pass to Lamine Yamal and then sprints into space where he latches onto the return ball to score a world-class goal — Bellingham trots back, frustrated, impotent and briefly rendered irrelevant. It was the precise opposite of his entire debut season for Madrid.
So, here’s the truth: even though he sensed all this was coming, even though you can see the fury and frustration emanating from him in every single match, and even though he and his teammates have had their backsides handed to them in all three Clásicos this season so far, Bellingham remains a footballer who can turn the tide on Sunday. He remains someone whose headers from crosses, whose shooting from distance and whose ability to arrive in the box where the rival defence least wants to see him could, quite easily, turn the last Clásico of the season back in Madrid’s favour.
At which point, in LaLiga terms, all hell would break loose. Can he produce another Hollywood moment in a career already filled with them?
