A story that began in England’s old industrial heartland has arrived under the marble ceilings of football’s great theatre. From the Black Country to the Bernabeu Stadium; Jude Bellingham is a Real Madrid player.
At 16, he was the youngest player in Birmingham City’s history. At 17, he became an England international. Today, at just 19, with the swoosh of Florentino Perez’s fountain pen, he has stepped through the curtain and out onto stardom’s stage.
At an initial €103million (£88m; $110m), Bellingham is now the second-most expensive footballer Britain has ever produced, signed on a deal that could potentially take him top of that list.
Birmingham is the United Kingdom’s second-largest city. A three-hour drive north of London, it was once the Industrial Revolution’s mind and muscle. Today, it’s a multicultural, million-strong metropolis that sits between England’s north and south.
It’s also home to two football clubs. Aston Villa, from the city’s north, and Birmingham City, to its east. The latter have spent much of their history outside of the Premier League. It’s been 12 years since they last played in England’s highest division and for much of the past decade, the club have been staggering through a haze of nebulous ownership and financial uncertainty. Since Premier League relegation in 2011, Birmingham have rarely threatened a return. More often, success has simply been to survive at their new, second-tier level.
Four years ago, in August 2019, Pep Clotet was standing in the technical area of their St Andrew’s stadium. A first-half injury in a game against Stoke City had left Birmingham with a problem to solve and Clotet — and his assistant manager Paco Herrera — with a decision to make.
“We were thinking ‘What can we do?’. Paco said: ‘Why don’t we give the chance to Jude?'”
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Clotet speaks to The Athletic from his home in Barcelona and he pauses as he reflects on the delicacy of the situation.
“OK, I thought, but this a tough moment. We don’t want him to fail and we don’t want to lose at home. It might damage him.”
The world knew who Jude Bellingham was by then. His name had been whispered by the winds for some time. He was the impossibly complete midfielder; the brightest prospect England had seen in generations. He had been part of Birmingham’s academy since the age of seven and across the next decade, clubs from across the country would take their turn in trying to tease him away.
But Bellingham remained loyal. He loved Birmingham and Birmingham loved him. He was born in Stourbridge, a red-brick market town 10 miles to the city’s south west. A few weeks before that Stoke match, Bellingham had set that record as the youngest player in his hometown club’s history in a League Cup game. Just over two weeks later, he made his league debut — but that had been only 15 minutes of a game that was already lost.
Clotet and Herrera knew this was different. At home, with an hour left to play and with the game still goalless and on a knife’s edge; that was a pressure the 16-year-old Bellingham didn’t know.
Was he ready?
It’s a question without an answer that coaches have been facing forever. A young player is fragile, their progress has to be at a speed that suits them. For Birmingham, whose financial future was never certain, the most valuable asset in their history was an especially delicate issue.
“Paco said to me: ‘You know, there are people who are born to play football — and when they’re born to play football, they make things happen’.”
Clotet’s mind was made up. On went Bellingham to make his home debut at St Andrew’s.
To that point, his sole experience in senior football had been defeat. 3-0 against Portsmouth; 3-0 against Swansea. A third loss in a row would be a chastening baptism nobody needed.
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And Birmingham fell behind. 0-1 became 1-1 with 15 minutes left, though. St Andrew’s shook and the disposition changed. It was early season and nothing was critical, but the crowd was in the mood for a winner. Three minutes later, they’d get it. And it came from one of their own.
The ball would break to Bellingham on the edge of the penalty box and his shot, via a heavy deflection, wrong-footed the goalkeeper and spun into the net.
In the media gantry, microphones peaked and cables probably came unplugged. Behind the goal, fans barged to the front of the stand, clamouring towards their local boy as he slid in celebration in front of them.
It was a moment that had been coming. Jude Bellingham has always been a star.
Until his arrival at Real Madrid, Jude Bellingham had always worn the same number, too.
The story of why is one of his founding myths and arose from a conversation the then 12-year-old had with Mike Dodds, his academy coach at Birmingham City.
“He said he wanted to be a No 10,” Dodds recalled, speaking to The Athletic in 2020.
“I said: ‘I think you can be a 22’.
“He asked what I meant and I said: ‘You can be a No 4, a No 8 and No 10 — someone who can do it all’.”
Second-hand, it sounds like an aphorism from the walls of academies up and down the country. But Dodds evidently knew the kind of personality he was dealing with, even if Bellingham’s extraordinary future as a player wasn’t yet clear.
“It was his ability to take and retain information and his desire to do more that made the difference,” Dodds says.
“So, the biggest thing I take from my 10 years with him, is that conversation about identity. That’s what set him apart from the other boys: he wanted to be different.”
Bellingham is different, but he also conforms to something very traditional. What the world sees today — the player who Birmingham created but who is now draped in Madrid’s white robes — is the kind of footballer English football wants to see when it looks in the mirror.
In many countries where the game is popular, reverence is reserved for certain positions. The No 10 will always matter most in Argentina because of Diego Maradona’s looming silhouette. In Germany, long after its tactical relevance faded, the disdainful elegance of Franz Beckenbauer made the libero the role of the footballing gods.
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In England, it’s more a collection of fabled ideals that matter. There are those that can be seen and trusted — the sort to reassure those who have bought a ticket and taken a seat that they haven’t wasted their time. That’s a player with skill and craft, but desire and determination, too; one who is everything all at once, who demands the ball, imposes their will and knows what the sport is worth.
Jude Bellingham is that player. He’s someone who children pretend to be in the playground, but who also has the spirit to enrapture their parents. He’s flash but with all the fight.
In essence, a footballer imagined by the English psyche. Someone who can do it all. A true No 22. At Real, he will wear No 5 — the number of one of his and the club’s heroes, Zinedine Zidane.
It’s also a quirk of his story that he should come from Stourbridge. The town is contained within the borough of Dudley, where Duncan Edwards was born. And where he lies today.
Edwards is a character from football scripture — the most potent of myths. At just 21, he had already become the Boy King of Manchester United and England.
Most likely, he would have achieved everything in his career. Perhaps he, not Bobby Moore, would have lifted the World Cup for England in 1966. But in 1958, he died from injuries suffered in the Munich Air Disaster, the accident which killed eight members of Matt Busby’s Manchester United team.
Edwards was powerful and complete. He had skill, size and speed and because he played before television and at a time when reporting was more anecdotal, his passing produced an awful but seductive ellipsis.
Today, the first thing anyone sees when they visit Dudley is a statue of him at the crest of the hill leading into the town. Forgive the romantics their wry smile, then, at Bellingham being raised almost in its shadow and speaking with the same undulating Midlands accent that Thomas Shelby has made famous.
When Bellingham decided to leave Birmingham City in 2019, there were two surprises.
The first was that he chose to join Borussia Dortmund rather than Manchester United, continuing his development outside of England and away from the Premier League.
Traditionally, British footballers have not made good exports. In the modern era, that has started to change and Dortmund specifically are one of the reasons why. They’ve built their modern reputation on nurturing young players and, importantly, allowing them to leave at the right time and for large fees.
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Winger Jadon Sancho left Manchester City’s academy for BVB in 2017 without playing a single minute of Premier League football. Within four years, he returned as an England international and as one of the most coveted players in world football. Erling Haaland was more experienced when he joined in 2020, but after two short years he departed a far better player and one ready to redefine the Premier League’s goalscoring parameters.
Bellingham was following their lead and it was strategically smart. The precious currency for young players is time on the pitch and, almost immediately, he was playing for Dortmund in the Bundesliga and the Champions League. That such experience would happen under the watch of a club with such specific expertise was an advantage. That it occurred away from English football’s intrusive insularity was likely another.
The second surprise following his £25million sale was that in the announcement confirming his departure, Birmingham revealed they would be retiring Bellingham’s No 22 shirt.
“In such a remarkably short space of time,” read a press release, “Jude has become an iconic figure at Blues, showing what can be achieved through talent, hard work and dedication. His caring, humble and engaging off-the-field demeanour has also made him such an impressive role model.”
The tribute of retiring a shirt does not really happen within English football. Not even upon retirement. To do it for a 17-year-old player with fewer than 50 appearances was without precedent and — unsure of how to respond — the response was snide and, in some places, nasty.
But Birmingham City were celebrating the footballer they had helped to create. And the person, too.
The early portraits of Bellingham have familiar themes — they’re bedrock tales from so many successful careers that they form the pages of almost every sports autobiography written.
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He was dedicated and committed. He had remarkable coordination that made him a natural in other sports, too. He also learned his love of football from his father – Mark Bellingham is a former police officer who had a prolific semi-professional career. Young Jude — and Jobe, his younger brother, a very fine prospect in his own right — were fixtures on the touchline, watching their father and kicking a ball about when the pitches were free.
The Bellinghams were a strong, supportive family — they continue to be — and they and their sacrifices provided the platform for a career that has now arrived under the brightest lights.
So far, so normal, though; those tales all form the traditional prelude to success.
But perhaps where Bellingham’s story diverges — maybe what sets him apart — is described in testimony from those who have coached him, but also most of the people who have come into contact with him.
Dodds described “an unbelievably humble boy, down to earth and so career-focused. He’s articulate and bright, so he processes things quickly, and he has high emotional intelligence.”
“He’s very, very easy to work with,” says Clotet. “Because he has high standards and puts high expectations on his own work.”
Clotet has seen many players in the years since. He’s coached in seven different countries and is currently managing Torpedo Moscow. The pride he takes in Bellingham’s progress and the satisfaction he evidently felt in being a part of his story are both easy to see.
“It was only ever a matter of challenging him. When he did something bad, I could tell him. I could say: ‘Jude, that’s not good — that’s not what we want’.”
Football is an indulged world that doesn’t naturally create people who are responsive to criticism, even when it’s constructive. From a very young age, seemingly from the moment a professional career became viable — inevitable, even — Bellingham seems to have recognised the value and worth of coaching advice.
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“He would just say: ‘You’re right — we’ll see tomorrow’. Straight away, he would make it better. He could recognise a mistake, then solve it and sort it. Jude gets respect from everyone because he puts in all the effort and mentality. And gets results.”
There are few airs or graces, either. No controversy. Those who have encountered him talk of a respectful and polite person, whose maturity and emotional intelligence are extremely high, and who remains unaffected, even as his career approaches the stratosphere.
“In my opinion, he’s not just a great player because of what he does on the pitch, but because of how he behaves away from it,” Clotet says.
“I’ve met him many times after he left Birmingham and I’ve never seen him change. It’s just the same old Jude.”
The retirement of his shirt was always likely to provoke a hail of mocking remarks. It was an earnest gesture in a footballing world that, increasingly, doesn’t know what to do with sincerity or anything that strays from convention. It happened at a time when nobody really understood who — or what — Bellingham was.
As it turns out, Birmingham City were just the first to know.
It was September 2022 and Dortmund were hanging on to a lead. The autumn brought their first derby of the season, against Schalke from nearby Gelsenkirchen, and the 81,000 people inside a heaving Signal Iduna Park were living every bounce of the ball.
Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen are cities of the Ruhr Valley. Tucked in Germany’s western corner, it is where migrant workers arrived in the 1950s to swell the country’s labour supply and power its post-war economic recovery. The two cities are staunchly working class. They boomed around heavy industry and while some of those have declined and faded away, they are the centre of Germany’s industrial core.
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Inevitably, Dortmund and Schalke despise each other. The Revierderby is a fistfight between cousins who live just 30km (22.3 miles) apart, played within the bright flames of a thousand pyrotechnics. Contained within Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion, it’s one of German football’s brightest and best spectacles.
Inside, the stands are a mile-high and as black as a coal face. The lip of the roof curves in, too, keeping the noise from floating away. When it’s full, the sound must make being on the pitch like trying to play football in a furnace.
Back in September, as the game approached stoppage time, the atmosphere within that boiling pot simmered. Dortmund had not played well but had been good enough to score and now just had to survive the time left.
In that white-hot heat, Jude Bellingham wanted the ball. Actually, he demanded it. And the crowd loved him for that courage.
Every time he touched it and inched Dortmund up the pitch and closer to the finish line, they thundered his name. It sounded like they were booing, but it was really a deep, guttural roar of appreciation.
“Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.”
It was easy to forget he was still just a boy. An adult, legally, but really just a teenager, stood within the tempest and urging his team-mates forward.
When he arrived in Dortmund, his mother Denise would drive him to training. His father, Mark, would also spend time in Germany, as the Bellinghams balanced providing support to Jude and Jobe, back home in England.
They made it work. And their son quickly had Dortmund’s temple of football, with its frothing energy and unique gravity, under his command.
“Everyone had high hopes, but he still managed to surprise them,” says Stephan Uersfeld, a football writer for N-TV.de and also a Dortmund fan and season ticket holder, and he describes to The Athletic the expectation surrounding Bellingham’s arrival in Germany.
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“There had been talk of a young kid from Birmingham arriving for about a year before he signed. Everybody who knew about him was convinced he’d be great given the club’s history with young players — but there was amazement at the fee.”
The only regret, perhaps, is that Bellingham arrived after the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown had begun. But despite strict capacity limits and many of his early matches being soundtracked only by echoes within empty stadiums, he quickly became extremely popular.
He was the right player in the right place, playing in the right way.
“He understood the mentality of Dortmund,” Uersfeld says.
“It’s a steel city and Birmingham is an industrial area, too. On the pitch, it’s also different to somewhere like Munich. On a national level, Dortmund are the underdog and he understood that.”
At full capacity, the centre-piece of the Westfalenstadion is its famous ‘Die Gelbe Wand’ (‘Yellow Wall’). Die Gelbe Wand is the stadium’s engine room and Bellingham developed an almost immediate rapport with its 25,000-strong terrace.
“He got on really well with the Sudtribune (South Bank) and understood how to get them behind the team. Also, the way he played — with his never-say-die attitude and his tackling — it was actually something Dortmund had needed on the pitch for some time.”
That’s perhaps where German and English ideals converge: that appreciation for whole-heartedness.
Bellingham’s evolution was rapid. He broke into the team’s midfield ahead of schedule and, as Uersfeld suggests, before it was properly balanced. Among his positive contributions, the result was occasional tactical wildness and over-exuberance. He would take chances in the wrong places and sometimes put possession at risk.
Dortmund were also suffering coaching difficulties. Lucien Favre was managing the side when Bellingham arrived but he would be sacked just six months later. Edin Terzic was appointed on a temporary basis and was then succeeded by Marco Rose at the beginning of the 2021-22 season. But Rose himself was gone after a year, with Terzic taking charge again, but full-time.
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At the end of that technical back and forth, Bellingham emerged as a better-defined midfielder. Pushed forward into a more attacking position, Dortmund have created a freer role for him. It’s similar to a change that England made ahead of the World Cup in Qatar. Speaking to The Athletic during that tournament, the West Ham midfielder Declan Rice explained his role in relation to Bellingham: “For every game I’ve played with him so far, I’ve just said to him: ‘This is your stage, go out and perform. I’ll be behind you. Don’t feel like you can’t go out there, attack and get in the box. Just feel free and I’ll be there for you’.”
England’s World Cup ended prematurely, with a narrow quarter-final loss to France. Nevertheless, it was still time enough for Bellingham to show he was already a star. He scored England’s first goal of the tournament with a looping header against Iran. He helped create two of their three against Senegal in the first knockout round and, in the France game that ended England’s involvement, he was still among the best players on a pitch that was crowded with stars.
After the World Cup and back with his club, Emre Can was his Declan Rice. The security Can provided at the base of Dortmund’s midfield in 2022-23 was key to the form that nearly took them to the Bundesliga title. It also unlocked the level of expression that made Bellingham the league’s footballer of the year. While he may have initially won hearts with his tackling, his defensive contribution has noticeably receded over the past 18 months, replaced not just by goals and assists, but a startling range of attacking influence.
The precise, cutting passes that he can play with both feet and with studied depth. The little dashes of one-touch skill and the teasing touches and tight command of the ball. Those are the attributes that make Bellingham a spectacle. But physically, he’s almost perfect for his position. His height makes him an aerial threat and his long stride allows him to smoothly change speed and accelerate away from the defenders he beats.
When all of those abilities are in concert, the results can be spectacular. A goal in October 2021, for instance, when he danced through a forest of defenders in Bielefeld and lifted a gentle chip over the goalkeeper. Or against Stuttgart, almost exactly a year later, when he placed a sidefoot into the bottom corner of the goal with ludicrous ease before peeling away to celebrate with his arms outstretched and his chest jutted out.
There is a swagger to his celebrations sometimes; often in fact. They’re intriguing because they show that Bellingham is that rare commodity in sport. Yes, he’s humble and hard-working, but he also knows exactly how good he is. The melodrama at Madrid will probably suit him — he’ll most likely revel in the opportunity to show his new club were right to have spent what they did.
Naturally, the greater the footballing effect he’s had, the more he’s grown in stature. The development in his playing personality happened instantaneously, in the sense that he was quickly unafraid of holding his (older) team-mates to his own standards.
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During a Europa League defeat to Rangers in the 2022 Europa League, a pitchside microphone caught a frustrated outburst that was aimed at team-mate Nico Schulz after an errant pass.
“You can’t get one f***ing pass off, you’re f***ing s***. Every f***ing time!”
It was aggressive and harsh. Equally though, Dortmund were exceptionally poor in that game and many supporters will have felt that a heavy dose of accountability was exactly what was required.
On another occasion, after Dortmund had lost 3-2 to Bayern Munich in December 2021, he gave a post-match interview to broadcaster ViaPlay in which he questioned the performance of referee Felix Zwayer.
“You give a referee that has match-fixed before the biggest game in Germany, what do you expect?”
Inevitably, Bellingham was investigated and fined by the German Football Association (DFB). But Zwayer was involved in the German match-fixing scandal of 2005 and he did serve a six-month ban. That he remains involved in top-level Bundesliga games to this day is still a contentious issue among German fans and media.
That isn’t to say Bellingham was justified in saying what he did, but the episode — like the incident with Schulz and another reported dressing-room argument with Axel Witsel, a senior player — describe a combative side of his personality that should serve him well in Madrid.
After all, how many wallflowers have survived in the Bernabeu?
Nobody at Dortmund has ever discouraged that side of his character. In October 2022, with Mats Hummels and Marco Reus unavailable, head coach Terzic handed his 19-year-old midfielder the captain’s armband for a game against Cologne. It made him the youngest player in Bundesliga history to captain a team.
That flicker of ego has served Dortmund well, too. Particularly recently, as Uersfeld describes: “The World Cup changed him because that’s when he moved on to a very big stage and became a star player.
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“With that star power came the fear — for teams who wanted to beat Dortmund but knew they had to beat Jude Bellingham, too. He soaked up all of that and gave freedom to others.”
It’s an astute point. That sense of being a primary target is likely why, in concert with his more literal virtues, Bellingham’s presence in the side has allowed other Dortmund players to thrive. Can was excellent in that more simplified role this year. Julian Brandt had an exceptional season, as did Sebastien Haller. Donyell Malen and Marius Wolf were also both greatly improved.
In some cases that connection is tenuous. In none of them is it purely coincidence.
Market Street in Stourbridge is unremarkable. It’s narrow with cobbled pavements on both sides and it is lined by staples of British high streets up and down the country. There’s a nail bar, a Waitrose, and the entrance to a shopping centre. On one side, a stout, brick-built church stands with trees at its gate and a vast, stained-glass window facing out.
It’s England. Almost anywhere.
But on the other side of the road, on a blank patch of wall, Jude Bellingham stares back at the people who pass by. He’s dressed in England’s white shirt at the middle of an abstract mural flecked with Dortmund’s vivid black and yellow and scenes from his career’s past.
Absolutely stunning work of @gent_48 who I got to chat with today. What a super talented guy. Thanks for your time 👍 @StourbridgeNews @bevthenewsgirl @bbcmtd @ITVCentral & of course @Annatomixx thanks for the heads up! #stourbridge #graffiti @BellinghamJude #art #blackcountry pic.twitter.com/HNdXeaqiVy
— SAB Photography (@sabphotos69) February 8, 2022
That doesn’t happen everywhere. Whatever happens in the future, he’ll likely matter more there than anywhere else. As he will to the coaches who’ve known him since he was a boy and to the children at Hagley Primary, who gathered wide-eyed around the television to see their most famous old boy score that goal for England at the World Cup.
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Most likely, the person in the picture won’t change, either.
Just Jude. Jude from Stourbridge.
But those who are watching will change. First, it was Birmingham, then it was Germany and England. Now, everyone is in the audience. They’ll see every tackle and touch, hear every word, and manipulate every quote if they get the chance. Smile at the wrong time and it will be a problem. Lose at the wrong moment and it definitely will be.
This is a local story, yes, and it will always be, but Jude Bellingham is the world’s footballer now.
(Top image: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic, photos: Getty Images)