Ale Moreno is singing Jude Bellingham’s praise after the young England midfielder scored twice in Real Madrid’s 2-1 win over Barcelona. (0:58)
Jude Bellingham, the player who won the Clasico for Real Madrid on Saturday, has had just one since his momentous €103 million move to La Liga this summer.
Coincidentally, if you understand me, it was in the post-match interview after their belated win over Union Berlin in the Champions League. I asked him if it wouldn’t be better for his blood pressure (and everyone else’s) if he started jotting down a few. He aims earlier in games rather than his admittedly sensational habit of cutting back the winner in stoppage time.
Already beaming with an intoxicating cocktail of natural endorphins and joy, clutching his Man of the Match trophy, he burst out laughing and said, “I guess it would be better for everyone’s well-being if I scored in the 47th or 60th minute. “. . However, I am perfectly satisfied to continue to generate defeated winners!”
Said with a bubbly joviality, typical of the charm and pure exuberance “life gives me a glorious gift” that the 20-year-old Englishman has shown since ignoring Manchester City’s pleas and signing for Madrid, neither I nor Bellingham understood that there was anything else. , even greater response.
Why blast a thunderous long-range shot to equalize a Clasico against Barcelona and then also launch a winning goal in stoppage time?
In fact, this is global in Bellingham and everyone is lucky enough to live there.
The phrase he added that night, after one of his many performances with friends, was the following: “I’ve had my own television at home since I was 12 or thirteen years old and since then I’ve watched Real Madrid win in front of everyone. “odds when you’re like, ‘Wow, how did they recover from that?'”
However, that win, their 2-1 win over Barcelona on Saturday, was not in that category.
Almost from the moment Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti started making substitutions, willfully ignoring the concept that it might not be Bellingham’s day, given how sensationally Gavi was betting against him, the Clasico suddenly turned heavily in the direction of Madrid.
What’s special is how a “rookie”, a relatively young foreigner who is still coming to terms with a new language, a new culture, one of the most political and difficult clubs in the world and who had a relatively complicated and discouraging afternoon. – you can still produce natural moments of genius in a bottle like this and win a Clasico.
If any of you are going to take for granted what’s going on because Bellingham has been so important, so awesome, then please pinch yourselves. Think.
When I was asked for the first time on LaLiga TV in August to summarise what I thought of the Englishman’s effect on his new club and La Liga, I replied: “I think anything has happened. “That’s what I think and don’t take away an inch of meaning or accent.
When Bellingham scored the Whites’ first goal on Saturday, amid the uproar, Nacho turned to his fellow substitutes on the Madrid bench and simply said: “Oh my God!”I think this phrase has universal understanding: it is absolutely wonderful, natural and simple.
Nacho may not be respected as the most competent or technically gifted man in Madrid, that’s fine. But if you look at his world-class long-range goal for Spain against Portugal at the 2018 World Cup, I think it touches you how a guy who can score such a powerful and intelligent goal remains stunned by what Bellingham has done.
One day I interviewed the legendary Johan Cruyff at his home in Barcelona’s Zona Alta and in the course of an hour-long conversation I asked him: “Who is your toughest rival?”No response. He certainly named Berti Vogts, the fierce full-back who won the 1974 World Cup. “Why?” Cruyff said, wincing at the memory, “Because you twisted and rotated and gave him an ability and then in a split second, he’d be there again, somehow, snapping and rumbling in my ankles. “
It’s the 50th anniversary of Cruyff’s Clasico debut as a Barcelona player while Bellingham was doing his magic tricks at the Olympic Stadium. If the glorious Dutchman had still been with us, he would have smiled as he watched Gavi give a Vogts-style masterclass on English. – for about 95 percent of the game, of course.
When Barcelona is on the rise, Gavi the architect. When they’re together, the eye will make you think that the 19-year-old Spaniard may have a perfect match in Bellingham’s pocket. Instead, he combined Bellingham’s harassment and tension into transient frustration, while adding clever distribution, infinite power and a shot at the feet of Toni Kroos for Fermin Lopez to unleash a shot at goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga’s right-hand post. Neither that nor Inigo Martinez’s header at the other end of the pitch doubled Barcelona’s lead and there is the elegant look of Madrid’s victory.
Barcelona coach Xavi Hernandez’s argument continued: “It’s an undeniable summary: we ruled for 60 minutes and scored once, then they had 25 smart minutes and scored twice. We played smart football, our functionality deserved more, but that’s about it. . about efficiency. Right now, Bellingham is in a state of grace.
There was another very important moment for the home team, which came to nothing, when VAR missed a very clear penalty committed by Real Madrid midfielder Aurélien Tchouaméni on Ronald Araújo.
But in those times of accusations and defamation, when all of us who love football need to be convincingly sure that the accusations made in the La Liga referee corruption scandal, which has so shattered the reputation of Spanish football, are false or can be categorically shown and then prosecuted; it must be said that the referee, Jesús Gil Manzano, was right at all times.
He allowed for physically powerful challenges, was close enough to all the action to avoid being dumbed down when players cried and threw themselves to the ground, and his refereeing was exactly what his big boss, Luis Medina Cantelejo, demands of referees. Less soft fouls, more decisions with the same criteria that we see in England, Germany or the Champions League. The goal is fewer stoppages, a higher pace of play, fewer players who think they can fool the referees and, above all, a greater spectacle.
This is unequivocally what we were offered at the Olympic Stadium: the entertainment Citius, Altius, Fortius (“Faster, higher, stronger”, as the Olympic motto says).
It was planned that, one day when Rolling Stones stars Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood, both born in the same country as the young Bellingham, were watching, the Clasico would have a strong English theme. Barcelona sported the Stones logo on the front of their shirts, as requested through their sponsor Spotify, but another theme song also emerged.
It may have been Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” Blondie’s “Dreaming” or Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” as they all capture the feeling the two goalscorers feel in the first Clasico of the season.
As a child in Turkey, Ilkay Gündoğan used to gather in his parents’ living room, where he would watch TV on Champions League nights, to watch Barcelona play and let his brain wander with the idea that one day he might wear this Blaugrana shirt. He told me that he only allowed sitting on the floor because the sofas and chairs were all occupied by siblings, parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents, all fascinated by the way Barcelona played at the time.
That’s why Gündoğan turned down a number of clubs, many of which offered him a higher salary, and also turned down the option to stay at Manchester City on a renewed contract to sign with Barca in a flexible move this summer. Tchouameni’s unfortunate interception of the ball followed, with Dani Carvajal and David Alaba half-exposed, half-asleep and dribbling the ball under Kepa for the 1-0.
As it turns out, Bellingham’s dream is bigger, stronger, younger, or luckier: take your pick.
In the end, last summer, Bellingham didn’t need to stay at Dortmund, he didn’t need to sign for Liverpool and it hadn’t even occurred to him to bet on Pep Guardiola and add his brilliance to the reigning treble champions. Bellingham, like David Beckham and Gareth Bale before him, aspired to play for Los Blancos, to add his call-up to the countless legendary players who have made this club the greatest success in history.
In fact, it’s not the first time this season that Real Madrid have had to thank the force of dreams and then hum a few bars of “Hey Jude”. To paraphrase that eternal Beatles anthem, even one afternoon of the Rolling Stones, the move that Necessary on the shoulder of the last Barcelona defender just as Luka Modric, inadvertently, bounced the ball off Martinez, and then made Barça cool down a bit on a global level.