Jude Bellingham - Is he the 'Real' deal?

It seems the race for the golden boy is over before it even got started.

May 05, 2023

Real Madrid target Jude Bellingham chooses next club

My initial plan was to write this article closer to the transfer window when the Jude Bellingham saga really started to heat up, but it seems like Real Madrid have forced my hand.

According to various reports, Los Blancos are close to agreeing a deal with Borussia Dortmund for the transfer of the mercurial 19-year-old (honestly how is he still a teenager) this summer.

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Now with all that out of the way let’s get onto the real meat and potatoes of Jude Bellignham’s move this summer.

I’m going to have to alter the concept of the article slightly given that this transfer is further along than I expected (it’s not confirmed yet but we’ll work on the basis that he will be a Madrista).

My original plan was to talk about each team and how Bellingham would fit in if he signed for them, but now I’m going to talk about how he could fit in at the Bernabeu and why it’s probably for the best that the other teams who were interested aren’t going to sign him.

Let’s get into it.

Real Madrid

I’m going to start with a hot take. While I’m quite happy that I won’t have to see Bellingham turning out week in and week out for one of Manchester United’s rivals, I don’t get why Real Madrid are going all in to sign the English midfielder.

Luka Modric, Toni Kroos and Casemiro (before his move to United last summer) formed an imperious midfield for nearly a decade in the Spanish capital, but now their era is coming to an end.

They have already signed Eduardo Camavinga and Aurelien Tchouameni to refresh the midfield and it seems that Bellingham is their final acquisition to complete the trio… but wait, isn’t there someone that we’re forgetting.

Federico Valverde is one of Real Madrid’s best players and has come on leaps and bounds since Carlo Ancelotti’s return to the club. He also possesses many of the traits that Bellingham would also bring to the team and is only 24 years old.

Valverde is an exceptional operator in the final third. He is a great ball carrier and a constant goal threat (even if he does enjoy a frivolous long shot from time to time).

Bellingham is more well-rounded than Valverde, but given the other midfielders he would be partnered with (and his price tag), you would assume that his defensive duties would be minimised and like the Uruguayan midfielder he would be tasked with causing problems much further forward.

For me, it would be much better if Real spent less money and found a tempo-controlling midfielder to replace Kroos and then used the extra money to find a long-term successor to Karim Benzema, who will be 36 years old next season and has one year left on his contract.

But this is Real Madrid, nothing they do makes sense on paper and tactics aren’t first and foremost in their mind.

They are signing Jude Bellingham because they need a midfielder, yes, but more because he is the hottest prospect in world football currently and bringing him to the Bernabeu signals that Real Madrid is still the biggest club in Europe (at a surface level at least).

As Logan Roy said in Succession: ‘Sometimes it is a big d*ck competition’ and if anyone in football constantly feels the need to prove that to the rest of the world, it’s Florentino Perez.

Real Madrid could reinvent their midfield after the departure of Ancelotti to be much more dynamic and at 19 years old, Bellingham could still be further developed and moulded into the exact midfielder Madrid needs.

So although I don’t get it right now and at the price quoted, it’s not the worst move and it won’t be as hard to integrate Bellingham into the Real Madrid side unlike some of the other teams he was linked with, but someone will have to give way1.

The Other Teams Who Lost The Race

I’ll get this out of the way quickly, if Jude Bellingham had gone to Manchester City it would have been over for all of us.

Combining Bellingham’s potential with Pep Guardiola’s coaching and inserting him into a stable midfield would have been a cheat code, especially with Erling Haaland creating massive black holes of space for his third-man runs.

With Ilkay Gundogan likely to leave at the end of the season there was a ready-made place for him alongside Rodri and Kevin de Bruyne, so let’s be glad that as it stands he is not heading to the Etihad this summer.

However, in terms of the other Premier League teams that were considering Bellingham, it was probably better for them that they weren’t able to secure his signature.2

Liverpool needs to completely rebuild their midfield, and with that in mind, Bellingham would have been the jewel in the crown of a new-look trio in the middle of the park.

Jordan Henderson has been trying his hardest to get Bellingham to Anfield and the fanbase was clamouring for him to join, but is it a blessing in disguise that Real Madrid have stepped in and thrown their weight around?

I think his transfer would have come too early for Jurgen Klopp’s side. The likes of Henderson, Thiago, Fabinho and James Milner have completely dropped off this season so Liverpool needs multiple signings to rebuild their midfield from the ground up.

Spending over £100m just on Bellingham when three midfielders are needed just to make Liverpool’s midfield look competent seems like a bad idea. Bringing in someone like Alexis MacAllister alongside two other players would be a better move for me anyway.

He’s the right player at completely the wrong time.

Now onto Manchester United and they have probably dodged a bullet as well. Erik ten Hag’s side has a much more stable midfield than Liverpool and they are looking for the final piece of the puzzle.

Bellingham was targeted by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer while he was still at Birmingham before the midfielder ultimately decided to join Borussia Dortmund, but there was always an acceptance that once he decided to leave Germany that United would go back in for him.

United are looking for a player who thrives in the first phase of possession. A midfielder who can pick up the ball from the centre-backs, turn effectively and carry it up the field beating the opposition’s press.

Bellingham could be converted into this3 but that’s a lot to pay for that sort of player (it would be their record fee by a sizeable margin) and like Liverpool, United needs to spend across the board to solve several problems.

But if they do want to spend big on one position, United need a striker this summer, and while the market is full of options, they come at a high cost.

For example, if United want to sign Victor Osimhen he is likely to cost even more than Bellingham and the price of another target Randall Kolo Muani is being quoted in a similar ballpark to the English midfielder.

The Athletic have already reported that United will be operating on a limited budget due to FFP restrictions so they need to spend wisely.

It might serve United better in the long term if they are forced to properly scout out cost-effective alternatives to solve many problems after signing a striker given how they have overpaid for obvious targets in the past4. And if this sounds like pure copium to you, it is.

Finally, we have Chelsea and if you want me to unpack this mess and make sense of it, then you may be disappointed but I will try to do it anyway.

What Chelsea’s squad is going to look like over the next few seasons or even the next campaign is unclear, but one player who is likely going to be at the centre of it all will be Enzo Fernandez.

Fernandez was signed in January for over £100m from Benfica and while he has been one of Chelsea’s better players (that currently isn’t that hard) he hasn’t shown his full potential.

The Argentinian midfielder is currently playing as a six under Frank Lampard (and he also was playing there under Graham Potter as well) but in the long term, he will be better suited as a box-to-box midfielder which would put him in direct competition with Bellingham. To that end, Chelsea should look to sign a six this summer to release Fernandez rather than spending a ton on Bellingham.

But trying to make sense of Chelsea and what they’ll do at any point under Todd Boehly is a fool’s errand, but basically, as it stands now they shouldn’t sign Bellingham.

Bellingham is obviously a generational talent, that was clear the minute he broke onto the scene at Birmingham and continued his meteoric rise when he moved to Borussia Dortmund at such a young age.

He is only 19 years old and is only going to get better at Real Madrid. Whether he spends the rest of his career as a Galactico or moves elsewhere later on we will have to wait and see, but for the foreseeable, he will be the centre-piece of the European giant’s midfield.

Grace Robertson also made a great point that it is refreshing for one of England’s top players will be playing for a side that isn’t in the Premier League’s big six. This will only help the dynamics of the team and bring new tactics and ideas to the side.

However, for the Premier League fans who were hoping that Bellingham would turn out for them next season, this will be little comfort, but at least he won’t be turning out for their rivals either (unless you come up against Real in the Champions League but then that’ll suck regardless).

We’ll just all have to appreciate his talent from a distance as he lights up the Bernabeu and then we can hope he can bring us joy with the national team instead5.

Played on Paper

Jude Bellingham - Is he the 'Real' deal?

It seems the race for the golden boy is over before it even got started.

Real Madrid

The Other Teams Who Lost The Race

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