Bellingham smear campaign unjust at time of England goodwill making it much more harder to disagree with Ian Wright.
There was Sir Alex Ferguson. There was Bryan Robson. There was Eric Cantona. Even though Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the manager, was present, these four club veterans could sense the elusiveness, the coldness, and the drop of the shoulder as they pitched the dream of Manchester United to a 17-year-old from the Midlands. The persistent feeling that they were clinging to thin air, just as a lot of defenders Jude Bellingham would eventually come across.
Before getting into the specifics of Jude Bellingham the problem child, the petulant one, the harlequin of selfishness, let us take a moment and talk about Bellingham for what he truly is.
The artist, Jude. The apostate Jude. Jude is a game-obsessed student who, following a significant tournament victory, cites Theodore Roosevelt. The Jude, who has participated in five La Liga clásicos and scored the winning goal in three of them, scored one of the most famous goals in England’s history at Euro 2024.
However, listening to some of the recent conversations around Bellingham has led one to believe that all of this is incidental and almost unimportant.
Perhaps this was what Ian Wright meant on The Overlap last week when he commented that certain segments of the media “hate that they can’t get to him”. Indeed, Wright is a self-aware brand these days, paid to produce snackable content, but he also has a keen sense of what this stuff is. He has also witnessed how the media tries to mould its top football players, praising them for having a personality and then making fun of them for it.
Wright simply described how Bellingham’s otherness has made him an easy target. Consider Bellingham’s lack of Premier League experience. Few people watch all of his games, even in this day and age. There is a still a kind of freshness to him, a player unsullied by 24-hour tribal club discourse, who only really gets discussed at length about during international weeks.
On some level, there is a part of the English footballing ecosystem that has never really forgiven him for this. For spurning the tactile joys of Our League.
Perhaps this is why there is such unfiltered happiness in some corners of the media when Thomas Tuchel – who by contrast can’t stop waxinjg lyrical about how much he admires England – gives him a little punishment beating every now and again.
You have everything, then. This would be sufficient to establish him as The Other on its own. The tint of his skin comes next. Naturally, this doesn’t even slightly agitate the majority of people, but it will undoubtedly agitate others, some of whom purchase newspapers, and some of whom may even manage them. Therefore, there will unavoidably be a tiny swirl of media opinion catering to this segment of the public due to the basic law of the market.
Is Bellingham immune from criticism because of any of this? Not, of course. If he performs poorly, he performs poorly. However, it might be time to take a break since so much of the recent criticism has taken a dark turn towards more ethereal behavioural and attitude concerns.
For whatever reason, Bellingham may irritate you. However, did you administer the same character test to every other England player? Would you prefer a folk hero like Dan Burn more or less if he scored the game-winning goal in a World Cup quarterfinal match and yelled, “Who else?” down the camera?
The true shame here is that this is an England team that is very exciting and deserves to travel to North America on a wave of hope and goodwill. Eight victories, no goals given up, 22 goals from 11 scorers, a well-established system, and lots of good competition for spots. Bellingham, Morgan Rogers, Cole Palmer, and Phil Foden are all vying for the same slot. In essence, this is the stuff of dreams. Are bitterness and rancour really necessary?
However, we still need to press these keys in case we lose. In a way, the Bellingham coverage may have already accomplished its goal of creating scapegoats for failure, stirring up controversy, and generating new talking points and sacrificial cows. Before them were Marcus Rashford, Jess Carter, Raheem Sterling, and John Barnes. Who else, as a wise man once remarked.