Jude Bellingham reborn: How Real Madrid received Euros ‘scapegoat’ firing once more in time to take down Liverpool

It had been a long time coming but finally on November 9 a chorus of ‘Hey Jude’ echoed around the Santiago Bernabeu, Bellingham was back in his best position and back in the groove.

Real Madrid supporters are not always the most inventive when it comes to songs for players but the Beatles will always be big in Spain and the ‘la-la-la-la-la’ anthem was adopted last season almost as easily as the England midfielder adapted to Real Madrid. 

Hearing it again in that game against Osasuna after his first goal of the season, a successful international break with England, and then a second goal in two games for Madrid on Sunday – it’s no wonder that, as he admitted last night, the smile is back on his face.

He was honoured on Monday night in Madrid when the Spanish players union AFE made him their player of last season for those 19 goals and five assists as Real Madrid won the league.

So why did it take him until November to score his first goal this season? Returning from the Euros in Germany feeling like the scapegoat for England’s ultimate failure to peak in the tournament seems to have played a part but it wasn’t the whole story.

At his club in the summer Kylian Mbappe had arrived, Toni Kroos had left, and coach Carlo Ancelotti’s subsequent tactical tombola hadn’t stopped spinning since, leaving Bellingham as its biggest casualty.

The England midfielder scored 14 goals in his first 15 games last season, benefiting from playing at the top of a midfield diamond with Kroos, at his back and Vinicius and Rodrygo stretching the opposition ahead of him.

Even when Ancelotti tinkered with it and had him on the left of a midfield four he was still given license to roam into that central attacking space and he finished as the club’s top scorer.

But at the start of the season the emphasis was on getting the best out Mbappe, not upsetting Vinicius, and making up for Kroos’ departure. Building things around Bellingham no longer seemed Ancelotti’s priority.

October was an especially bleak month. On October 19 he was used on the right of a front three against Celta Vigo as Ancelotti experimented with a 5-2-3 in an unconvincing 2-1 win.

Three days later he was on the right of a midfield three against Borussia Dortmund as Madrid gifted the Germans a two-goal starting before coming back to win 5-2.

Then came the season’s first ‘El Clasico’ on October 26 and a new low. He was on the right again, this time in a midfield four, and he spent much of the first half tracking the runs of Barcelona’s left-back Alejandro Balde.

There was no license to make the explosive runs from deep that would have exposed a high defensive line that saw Barcelona catch Madrid’s forwards offside 12 times in that game.

Bellingham cut a forlorn and very frustrated figure leaving the Bernabeu that evening after the 4-0 humbling. It had been his worst day since joining the club and he had been prevented from playing to his strengths to avert it.

Two days before the team’s next league fixture, and after another defeat, this time against Milan, Ancelotti held a crisis summit with his players at their Valdebebas training ground. Something had to change.

Writing in El Pais this week the writer and sports journalist Manuel Jabois declared: ‘It is debatable who is the best player in the current Madrid team, but the one who makes everyone play better is undoubtedly Jude Bellingham.’ Ancelotti has come to the same conclusion.

The team had to start pressing with intensity higher up the pitch. 

If Kroos wasn’t there to build from deep then they had to start moves in the opposition’s half more by winning the ball back quicker and closer to the opponent’s goal. Bellingham was the key to that.

He had to be allowed to operate in the space behind the striker, be that at the top of a midfield diamond or starting on the left but with the freedom to make more of the runs that destroyed so many teams last season.

That weekend against Osasuna his heat-map was dragged back on to old territory. Madrid produced their best performance of the season and he got his first goal of the campaign in the 4-0 win provoking the subsequent serenading from the Bernabeu.

From his habitual No 10 position for England he was then outstanding on international duty against Greece and Republic of Ireland, and last Sunday he was Madrid’s man-of-the-match with his second goal in two games as they beat Leganes 3-0.

He also provoked the opening goal robbing possession on the edge of the opponent’s area, allowing Vinicius to cross for Mbappe to score – a goal and an assist for Madrid’s ‘best’ players but a vital role for their most influential.

When Madrid are defending in their own half Ancelotti still wants Bellingham to be part of a midfield four protecting the defence, usually on the left. 

But when they have the ball, or in the first phase of play when they lose it in the opponent’s half, he wants him leading from the front.

All this means that he arrives at Anfield in his best form so far this season, and on a run of two goals in two games for Madrid. 

They could do with him continuing that scoring form tonight in the absence of Vinicius.

The Brazilian winger has scored 25 goals in the Champions League and five have come against Liverpool. He got the winner against them in the 2022 final and scored two at Anfield in a 5-2 win for Real Madrid a year later.

His injury and Trent Alexander-Arnold’s fitness problems deprive Real Madrid supporters of watching their top scorer go up against the player they expect the club to sign in the summer.

Real Madrid will not move for the Liverpool full-back in January despite the fact that first choice Dani Carvajal is out for the rest of the season with a cruciate tear. But he remains the player they want next summer.

He fits the transfer policy rule of asking anyone over 25 to run their contract down and arrive at the club without a transfer fee. There have been suggestions Tottenham’s Pedro Porro or Bayer Leverkusen’s Jeremie Frimpong are being looked at as alternatives but both players are contracted until 2028 and the Spanish club are not going to pay 50m pounds when the English option is free.

There has also been a sea-change at the club regards the wisdom of signing English players. It’s been over two decades since there were three – David Beckham, Jonathan Woodgate and Michael Owen – in the Madrid squad and it’s remembered as a period when the club was in the Champions League wilderness.

Bellingham won the Champions League in his first season, as well as a league title in which he managed to score the winning goals in both fixtures against Barcelona, but he’s also shown them a different side to the English footballer abroad, exploding the myth that they can’t adapt to new surroundings.

The 21-year-old England midfield was perhaps too adaptable for his own good at the start of the season when he was shuffled back to accommodate the top-heavy new Real Madrid XI.

He’s back leading from the front again now. Just in time to see if he can’t provoke a ‘Hey Jude’ rendition from Madrid’s travelling support at Anfield.