Will England love the real Jew Bellingham?

Imagine the embarrassment. You spend four years spreading the message of a messiah: a polite, wonderful star child and savior destined to lead us into the light. And then, a few days before his 21st birthday, he turns out to be someone else entirely. A petulant, superior, cocky little brat who scores one of the most beautiful goals in his country’s history and then runs off to scream “Who else?!” at a small nation whose sporting dreams he has just destroyed.

This is the evolution of Jude Bellingham. The rapid revelation of his fiery character and our new understanding of what he actually does on the pitch has been hard for some sections of the media to digest. On TalkSport, former Premier League coach René Meulensteen called his celebration against Slovakia “arrogant”, while social media is full of jokes about him shouting “vamos” more often than he plays a forward pass. Last year, stories leaked that his former Borussia Dortmund teammates were unhappy with his dressing room behaviour, while Gareth Southgate had to address some of his boisterous handbag-wielding and histrionics at the Euros.

The humble son of a policeman from Stourbridge now has the demeanour of a Neymar, a Mayweather or a kid from the Kennedy clan playing touch football at Princeton – someone who knows he’s better than everyone else and has no problem reminding them of it. Yet he has retained an extraordinary ability to always be there when it matters most. He has a confidence and a grit that are rare in British sport, where so much talent has a certain ‘pleased to be here’ mentality.

From the start, there was always the feeling that Bellingham was different. After making a splash for Birmingham City in the Championship, England’s second division, as a 15-year-old, he famously turned down an offer from Alex Ferguson to join Manchester United (unthinkable then, but entirely understandable now). Instead, he attended Borussia Dortmund’s girls’ school, where he established himself as an exceptional talent who could play almost any position in the German league. As his reputation grew, he did not return to the Premier League like fellow Englishman Jadon Sancho, but jumped straight into the deep end at Real Madrid, where Rick Rubin-esque coach Carlo Ancelotti turned him into a peculiar, deep-lying centre-forward with licence to crash into boxes full of centre-backs.

His eloquent, super-confident demeanor, sensible haircut and conspicuous lack of tattoos seemed to convince the Souness-Keane-Shearer sphere that this player wasn’t going to get involved with some evil super-agent or wrap a yellow Lamborghini around a tree any time soon. He did interviews with his parents and talked about the importance of staying true to his roots. The press started to hailed him – the phrase “he speaks well” began to follow him like a bad smell. In fact, I remember a tweet suggesting he should become a manager one day, based on a post-match interview. He was already refereeing something bigger than football.

But then Bellingham began to develop into something sharper and more star-like. In Madrid, his style of play – which in the Championship was reminiscent of a more athletic Ronaldinho – began to resemble Frank Lampard or a slightly more creative Jamie Vardy. He established a powerful, economical, ruthless but ultimately unsexy style of play – one that seemed to fade over the course of his 2023/24 season. Added to that were red cards, altercations with referees and other players, the occasional surly and irritable performance. It all reminds me of the line in Children of men about Baby Diego, a beacon of hope because he is the youngest person in the world. “‘Baby Diego’, come on. The guy was a wanker,” says Clive Owen’s character.

Personally, I couldn’t be happier. I’ve always liked the pricklier nature of professional sport. And, like Baby Diego, many of the GOATS are actually wankers. Sometimes that can be a good thing – Michael Jordan’s one-sided sociopathy, Maradona’s antics, the whole concept of Ian Botham. Sometimes, well, it can sound a bit CR7. Right now, it could go either way for Jude and that’s a very exciting situation for a young footballer. Still, there’s a faint sense of disappointment that Bellingham isn’t the scout that sensible Britain wanted. It reveals a strange desire for absolute subservience on the part of our sporting stars, a perfect fetish, a Matthew Pinsent ideal.

It’s a habit that piles unnecessary pressure on young people who are already under extreme pressure, and that often has dire consequences. The tabloid press is powerless today, but its “build them up and tear them down” attitude lives on in a variety of media forms. The medium may be different, but the message is the same. Bellingham’s predicament is reminiscent of David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, who were praised and destroyed in the context of a tournament, but also of people with blue hearts in their Twitter bios who @-ed Marcus Rashford every time a perceived injustice occurred, or GQ Raheem Sterling with angel wings on the cover. Somehow he manages to reconcile both the disdain of TalkSport and the delusions of liberal Britain. Both camps seem to share the same belief that these young sportsmen must represent something bigger than themselves and then drop them if they don’t meet those standards.

Having played most of his young career abroad, Bellingham has been largely spared this nonsense. But now that England are in the quarter-finals, the establishment’s gaze is on him. It’s a tricky one, because he is by no means playing well at the moment and should by no means be immune to criticism. A few more passes forward to his teammates and a little less whining about the linesman wouldn’t go amiss. But ultimately, football is defined by small moments of genius and Bellingham seems to have plenty of them. If England win tonight, there’s a good chance it will be because he’s in the squad.