FOR the inventors of the sport, for all its popularity in participation and observation, for all the advantages it has, England has punched well below its weight and produced few players in the modern era you could at one time call “the very best in the world”.
But last month, we lost one such example. Star of the 1966 World Cup winning team and European champion with Manchester United, Sir Bobby Charlton. His abilities as a gifted and natural footballer, an attacking midfielder, capable of blockbuster goals and a heat-seeking quarter-back passing range. He was revered around the world, the gentleman ambassador of English football, winner of the Ballon d’Or, in 1966 as well, survivor of the Munich air disaster. It could be argued that he and his ‘66 team-mate Bobby Moore are the only English players who deserve to be mentioned in the same company as all the other greats that world football has produced.
In many ways, he was the prototype of the ideal English footballer. Power, finesse, control and dominance. Someone who could win a game with one fatal stroke of his right boot, an all-action hero. We may never produce a Pelé, Maradona or Messi. A different kind of individual brilliance is feted on these shores.
Since then a number of players of a similar mould have come and gone. From Glenn Hoddle and Bryan Robson to the so-called Golden Generation of Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Paul Scholes and David Beckham. All world-class players, but none that we might call the very best in the world, as Charlton was.
But now we do. As we say goodbye to a great of the past, we hail the arrival of a new one – a player who is one of the very best in the world right now and, at only 20, likely to be for quite some time.
Like Charlton, if England fans could design the perfect footballer in a laboratory or on a computer, then Jude Bellingham would be their Frankenstein’s monster, their Kelly LeBrock. Another all-action hero who can do the bloomin’ lot. A Roy of the Rovers taking his team by the scruff of the neck and banging in brilliant or timely goals to win the game.
And yet, paradoxically, his outstanding excellence is as un-English as it could get because no other Englishman could ever do what he is doing right now at Real Madrid and what he can do as a footballer. It is quite staggering how good he is and how good he can become. He wears a five but he’s a perfect six, eight, ten and now, even, a nine – all rolled into one. The Playstation of all Playstation players who combines muscle and hustle with exceptional technical ability. Goals have added another dimension to his game. At Dortmund he scored 12 league goals in 92 appearances. At Madrid, it’s already ten from ten. Three from three in the Champions League too.
Gary Neville has already said what the rest of us are thinking: “If Bellingham continues like this, he could become the greatest English footballer of all time.”
But Alfredo Relano, writing for Spanish daily AS, summed him up best when he wrote: “The elegance in his gait and the manner in which he uses the ball, his ferocity and indefatigability in battle, he’s half artist, half warrior. He’s the organisational focal point of the attacking game and yet still able to be the goal-scorer finishing chances.”
Of the seven goals he has scored that effectively won the game for Real Madrid, four of them have come in injury time, including in Saturday’s El Classico at Barcelona. The right player at the right time.
Relano’s colleague Tomas Roncero purred: “Jude has us all in love … Bellingham has the football planet under his spell. A player without limits.”
But it is also the mental fortitude that, like Charlton, sets him apart from all those that have come and gone in between. A confidence supreme without any uneasy arrogance, without any doubt in his mind of what he can do, but also very much the gentleman too. Yes, Jude has us all in love. England has too long been a sad song in international football. Can he be the one that makes it better?
