Whenever you speak to anyone about Jude Bellingham – former teammate, coach, your mate down the pub – you may notice a regular tic produced as the discussion progresses: they laugh.
It’s only a brief, sometimes even imperceptible, chuckle, but it’s usually there at some point. That laugh says “my mind cannot comprehend that this guy is 20 years old and so it produces this involuntary noise every time I prepare to speak about him”. That is Gareth Southgate’s great task: stop the Bellingham laughter from dying out.
Four years ago, Bellingham had never even started a senior league game. Since then he has played most of a Championship season, moved to Borussia Dortmund, won a trophy, been named Bundesliga Player of the Season, started more than 20 Champions League games, scored at a World Cup, moved to Real Madrid and scored five goals in his first four games.
Remember when Birmingham City retired his number and everybody mocked them? We’re sorry: you were soothsayers.
There is a deep absurdity to all of this that must be kept at the front of our minds. Not only must we remind ourselves of Bellingham’s age (still more than two years younger than Paul Scholes when he made his England debut) but how hard his route has been.
Bellingham has made this all look so easy that it does him a disservice, inspiration distracting from perspiration and dedication.
Bellingham is also a unique England footballer. The country has possessed prodigious, fiercely bright young talents before and most of them have ended up abroad, either sooner or later: Lineker, Gascoigne, Beckham, Owen, Gerrard, Rooney.
But never before has an English player risen so far, so fast, without even stepping foot in England’s top division. It gives Bellingham an ethereality to his own population, a shimmering, intangible quality.
That adds a frisson of complication to Bellingham’s England career, because if you’re after an environment to offer a slap of reality to any fairy tale then being part of a team everybody routinely moans about will provide it. It has been easier to witness Bellingham’s majesty at arm’s length. Playing for England brings with it a duty to be overanalysed that inevitably chips away at the innocence of our enjoyment.
Still, you can’t escape it so prepare for the next Great Debate. The story about Bellingham’s No 22 is now famous – he could play as a no 4, 8 or 10 – but at Real Madrid we have seen him released from any or many defensive obligations to be an armed explorer in the final third.
The instant returns have offered tactical validation. Bellingham has almost a quarter of his career league goals in 351 Madrid minutes. You get where this is going: “For god’s sake, Gareth, let him just play!”
The reality is a little more complicated. Southgate cannot copy Carlo Ancelotti’s shape because it uses Rodrygo and Vinicius Jr as split strikers with Bellingham pushing up into the space and three deeper-lying central midfielders.
England have arguably the best centre forward in the world, Bukayo Saka has just been named England Player of the Year for the second season in succession and the options out wide are so numerous that Raheem Sterling can’t get back into the squad. We just aren’t the same.
Southgate’s logic is to have Bellingham on the left side of a 4-3-3, where he can carry the ball forward rather than receive it there.
The alternative is a 4-2-3-1 with Bellingham advanced and Declan Rice alongside another central midfielder. But who? Jordan Henderson and Kalvin Phillips are the two most defensive midfield options in this squad – one is 33 and playing low-level football, the other isn’t playing at all.
John Stones is one option – mimicking his new role at Manchester City – but that creates a hole in central defence. Southgate has repeatedly spoken about the lack of English holding midfielders playing regularly.
Either way, England’s manager will come under pressure to try. Bellingham is the fantasia player of his time and the accusation against Southgate is that he superfluously dulls the attacking edge of England due to an innate caution.
Allowing his wunderkind to roam and sow and reap free from the constraints of doubt and fear, even against the best teams in the world, would be a swift retort. It may also be the key to England’s chances of crowning glory next summer.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/SeQhlN5
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