Jude Bellingham is turning games and heads, a prodigy equipped to handle the hype

Wayne Rooney remembers looking around, living the dream as an 18-year-old at Euro 2004, and telling himself, “I’m the best player in the world. There’s no one better than me.”

“I believed that,” the former England forward said in his recent Amazon Prime documentary. “It could have been Pele, Maradona and George Best on the other side, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

Sven-Goran Eriksson, England’s manager at the time, believed it too. “The last time we saw a young player make such an impact might have been as long ago as the World Cup in Sweden in 1958,” he said. “Since then, I don’t remember anyone of 18 doing what Wayne is doing. If anyone remembers someone else, please remind me, but I doubt it very much.”

It sounded extraordinary coming from Eriksson, who was not the type to be caught up in hype, but he meant it. Pele’s feats as a 17-year-old at that 1958 World Cup, scoring six goals in four matches, including two in the final, were an outlier. Very few teenagers had gone to a World Cup or a European Championship and performed like Rooney was in Portugal.

Pele was, is and always will be the reference point for young players making a spectacular impression at a major tournament. Only three teenagers have played in a men’s World Cup final: Pele in 1958, Italy defender Giuseppe Bergomi aged 18 in 1982 and France forward Kylian Mbappe aged 19 in 2018. Mbappe’s impact in Russia was widely hailed as the greatest by a teenager at a World Cup since Pele.

Mbappe is doing it all again in Qatar — four years wiser as well as four years older — but it doesn’t always work that way. Rooney limped off in the quarter-finals of Euro 2004 with a fractured metatarsal and, although he played at another five tournaments for England, he never came anywhere near hitting that form on the biggest international stages again.

Michael Owen illuminated the World Cup as an 18-year-old in 1998, but his and England’s campaign was ended prematurely by Argentina in a last-16 penalty shootout and he too never had another tournament like it.

So it is with a degree of hesitation, along with a feeling of certainty, that we can state that Jude Bellingham’s impact at Qatar 2022 has been the greatest by an English teenager at a major tournament since Rooney in 2004 and the greatest by an English teenager at the World Cup since Owen in 1998.

Against Iran in England’s opening group game two weeks ago, Bellingham set the tone for an excellent all-round display with a brilliant header to open the scoring.

Against Senegal in the last 16 on Sunday, with England struggling to find any kind of rhythm to that point, the 19-year-old broke forward from midfield to set up Jordan Henderson for the opening goal and then, in first-half stoppage time, won the ball near his own penalty area, charged past another challenge and then picked out Phil Foden, who sent Harry Kane clear to make it 2-0.

Like Owen in 1998, like Rooney in 2004, like Gavi, Pedri and Jamal Musiala elsewhere at this World Cup, Bellingham is a phenomenon. Not in quite the same spectacular way as Owen or Rooney — or indeed Mbappe four years ago — but the Borussia Dortmund midfielder is certainly turning games and turning heads.

Don’t just take an English journalist’s word for it. Or the words of England team-mate Foden, who, having said he was reluctant to “big him up too much because he’s only young”, said after that 3-0 win over Senegal that Bellingham is “going to be the best midfielder in the world” — and yes, Gavi, Pedri, Aurelien Tchouameni and others might have a few things to say about that.

🗣 "He's one of the most gifted players I've ever seen, I don't see a weakness in him." @PhilFoden on @BellinghamJude 🙌#ITVFootball | #FifaWorldCup pic.twitter.com/4tcIvfyCcu

— ITV Football (@itvfootball) December 4, 2022

Venerable Italian sportswriter Paolo Condo, a press-box veteran of countless World Cups, describes Bellingham as “a football prodigy, a midfielder that contains multitudes (…): the director and the incursor, the half and the attacking midfielder, the prompter and the executor. If football speaks to something that lies deep within you, the dream of a geometric and at the same time artistic harmony, Jude Bellingham is the speaker of the new generation”.

Powerful words — and there have been so many of those about Bellingham lately.

Former England defender Gary Neville said on ITV on Saturday that the teenager “looks like he can do absolutely everything. It’s very rare you see a midfield player as comfortable in his own half as in the attacking half. Is he a holding player? An attacking player? He’s everything in one.”

There are certain similarities with Steven Gerrard, but the former Liverpool captain was surely among those Neville had in mind when he spoke of having seen top-class England players in the past who found “the weight of the shirt was enormous”. Bellingham, by contrast, “just doesn’t feel it all. He looks like he belongs out there, like he wants it and needs it in his life. Physically, he’s fantastic, so young, but it’s the composure, maturity and fearlessness I can’t get my head around”.

The maturity is the thing.

Owen was always portrayed as an old head on young shoulders at France 98 but he has spoken subsequently of how he was not really prepared when “fame and money descended on me” and suggested that, while his agent and a close-knit family helped him in many ways, it might have stunted his development in other areas.

Rooney, six years later, was a different kind of phenomenon: a street footballer with all of the rough edges that phrase implies, for better and for worse. Breaking through at Everton as a 16-year-old, he was a wrecking ball of a player with the touch of a ballerina. At 18, he already had the technical skill, the game intelligence, the courage, the belligerence, the physical prowess and the self-belief to look like a world-beater at Euro 2004, but he would admit it took him years to learn to cope with the expectations and pressures that came with his superstar status — if indeed he ever did.

Bellingham appears different.

People would use the word “streetwise” in connection with Rooney, but in many ways they meant it literally with regard to his familiarity with (and reluctance to leave behind) the streets where he was raised in Croxteth, Merseyside. Bellingham, by contrast, appears “world-wise”; he left Birmingham City for Dortmund just a few weeks after turning 17 and has flourished both on and off the pitch in Germany.

After Sunday’s game, he was photographed with his parents Mark and Denise. He is said to be pleasingly indifferent to material things; in at least two interviews, Bellingham has dismissed the idea of being motivated by “money and all that rubbish”. He manages to combine being down-to-earth with being totally self-assured. It is a rare combination.

Jude Bellingham with his proud parents last night ❤️ pic.twitter.com/GpY225enWZ

— Mimi Fawaz (@MimosaFawaz) December 5, 2022

Dortmund head coach Edin Terzic recently described Bellingham as “the oldest 19-year-old I have ever seen”. What he meant was he had never seen such maturity in a player of that age, both in terms of the way he performs and the way he behaves. If the stereotype of a young English footballer is of a man-child — grossly unfair in many cases, sadly accurate in others — then Bellingham is at the other end of the spectrum.

Owen recalls feeling detached from the rest of that England squad in 1998. The only players he knew in the group were his Liverpool team-mates Paul Ince and Steve McManaman, who were then 30 and 26 respectively. Other than Owen and a 19-year-old Rio Ferdinand, there was no player under the age of 23. It was similar for Rooney in 2004; the next youngest player was Joe Cole at 22.

It is different for Bellingham. Gareth Southgate’s squad in Qatar is a young one and Bellingham has been part of it for two years, making three cameo appearances from the bench at the Euros last year, and is fully integrated.

Rooney was playing for Everton, who had just finished fourth-bottom in the Premier League, and had never tasted European competition with them, which was a significant reason why he fought to secure a move to Manchester United later that summer. Bellingham has made more than 150 senior appearances for Birmingham and Dortmund, including 21 (in which he’s scored six goals) in the Champions League.

Owen admits he was bored stiff during that 1998 World Cup, “staring at the walls” of his hotel room during the six-hour interludes between lunch and dinner (others watched movies but Owen, famously, is by no means a cinephile). Rooney also struggled with the long afternoons and evenings at tournaments.

Southgate and his staff have worked hard to try to keep boredom at bay, but Bellingham seems the type who would be less troubled by that anyway. He plays video games, one-on-one basketball and card games with his team-mates; he is said to be an impressive bluffer when it comes to playing Werewolf.

In an interview with the FA’s YouTube channel, Bellingham was asked how he deals with the adulation he is getting. Owen’s and Rooney’s response back in the day was quite similar — “this is mad” — but he seems entirely unfazed by it: flattered but in no danger of feeling overwhelmed by the volume of praise he is getting on social media.

“It means a lot,” Bellingham says. “When you’re as far away (from home) as we are, you sometimes feel a bit out of touch with what’s going on. (But) I don’t want to be on my phone much because people talk a lot and there’s an element of wanting to disconnect and enjoy your time with your team-mates. It’s not always for me about being on my phone, looking at Instagram and Twitter, because you would go mad.”

A month ago, Bellingham had around three million followers on Instagram. At the time of writing, that is up to 4.3 million. Each of his past six posts has attracted more than one million likes and at least 4,000 comments, many of them from fans of Real Madrid or Chelsea or Manchester City or Manchester United or Liverpool (yes, definitely a lot of Liverpool) pleading with him to sign for their club. It is some way from Mbappe’s 75 million followers, never mind Cristiano Ronaldo’s 508 million, but Bellingham’s profile is soaring.

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The stakes for him and his England team are rising too.

Saturday’s quarter-final against Mbappe and defending champions France is the type of occasion he dreamt about when growing up in Birmingham. Some might imagine it would have been beyond his wildest dreams, but that is not the case. He said last week he always dreamt of playing at a World Cup, he just didn’t think it would happen quite this soon.

His England team-mates, a pretty talented bunch, appear to be in awe of his talent.

“I love playing with him,” fellow midfielder Declan Rice said. “He’s young, he’s energetic, he gets around the pitch really well. 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’.”

All the touches from a Jude Bellingham masterclass 🤌

Enjoy.#BBCWorldCup #FIFAWorldCup pic.twitter.com/psGhmzxbLO

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) December 4, 2022

There were similar instructions for Rooney in Portugal 18 years ago. Team-mates watched in awe as he ran rings around world-class defenders such as Lilian Thuram in their opening game against France; it was one of the great individual performances by an England player at a tournament, even though ultimately they lost 2-1 to two stoppage-time goals.

“The French were unbelievable,” Neville, also in the side that day in Lisbon, says in the Rooney documentary. “(Zinedine) Zidane and (Thierry) Henry were two of the best players in the world. Thuram was one of the best defenders in the world. And he (Rooney) was ripping them to shreds. They couldn’t handle him and he was 18 years of age.

“You don’t do that against France. He was doing something that was, for an English player, really really special. He was just breathtaking. This was a different level. This was something out of this world.”

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In a pre-tournament interview, Thuram had suggested Rooney was “too young for such a hard competition like this”. That only fuelled the England forward’s motivation, tormenting the France defender and at one point catching him with his arm and telling himself, ‘Now he knows who I am’.”

Today’s French players already know very well who Bellingham is — and Foden, and Bukayo Saka — just as England’s players know all about Tchouameni and, of course, Mbappe.

Not much in world football stays beyond the radar for long these days, particularly when we are talking about an English player performing in the Bundesliga and the Champions League for a club the size of Dortmund. If Owen was something of an unknown quantity at international level in 1998 after his breakthrough season at Liverpool, and Rooney likewise after two seasons in Everton’s first team, it is fair to say Bellingham’s prowess at 19 is more firmly established.

It sounds quite like a burden to shoulder, but Owen and Rooney carried it so lightly as teenagers. It was in later tournaments — hampered by injuries and fitness issues in either case — that they found it more difficult to carry the hopes and meet the expectations of a nation. Never again at an international tournament would Rooney feel as “unstoppable” as he did going into that Euro 2004 quarter-final against Portugal before injury wrecked his and England’s hopes.

Paul Gascoigne was older, 23, when he illuminated the 1990 World Cup, performing with a swagger and a confidence that was breathtaking. You would never have imagined at that point that he would only play in one more tournament for England. Again, injuries were a significant factor, but so was a struggle to deal with the limelight and the pressures and pitfalls that came with being such a brilliant footballer; by the time he played at Euro 96, his moments of magic tended to be filed in the “rolling back the years” category.

Gascoigne’s England career is remembered for the heights he reached at Italia 90 but also for the way he and his team fell agonisingly short at the tournament and again six years later. Owen scored 40 goals for his country but is remembered primarily for his scintillating impact in 1998, particularly that stunning individual strike in the last-16 against Argentina. Rooney went on to become England’s all-time record goalscorer, with 53 in 120 matches, but his precocious, prodigious talents were never showcased better than as a teenager at Euro 2004.

Bellingham has started all four of England’s games at the World Cup (Photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

Bellingham? Based on everything we see from him, on and off the pitch, it is hard to imagine he will be anything but an enduring success on the international stage. Everything about him, physically, mentally, technically, points to him being here for the long haul.

If his first World Cup adventure ends in the last eight on Saturday, he will tell himself he will do everything within his power to make sure he is back, better for the experience, in 2026, in 2030, and very possibly beyond.

There is, though, something alluring and something irresistible about a young player performing like this on the very biggest stage.

At any World Cup, there are usually only one or two teenagers who really come to the fore — and sometimes not as many as that.

Caution is to be exercised, but excitement is hard to resist.

Bellingham looks equipped to perform at the highest level of the game for the next decade and more, but the fearlessness of youth, of feeling unstoppable, like you can take on the world, might never be greater than now.

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(Main graphic — photos: Getty Images/design: Eamonn Dalton)