The Unstoppable Rise of Jude Bellingham: From Birmingham City to Real Madrid

The first goal Bellingham scored for Birmingham City was a stunner. He approached the area, threatened to give a pass but they left him a few meters and he shot; The ball hit an opponent and slowly slipped into the opponent’s goal. The stadium went crazy, he went crazy, his teammates went crazy. The competition was the Championship, the English Second. But Bellingham had turned 16 two weeks earlier. And he ran hysterically waving his arms towards the stands and fell to his knees on the grass. We had to wait for his second goal, some time later, in a game at Charlton’s home. The ball came to him openly inside the area; Bellingham had time to place him at an angle and ran with his arms crossed to the stands where the blue fans were, he stood in front of them and stayed like that, in that position. It was in April 2020 and Jude Bellingham has never stopped celebrating since then. His impact on the English team’s game was such that, after playing only that season in the first team, Birmingham City retired his number 22.

A piece of journalism published on Sky Sports about the Jude phenomenon describes the passion in Birmingham for him. It is not so much about his figure, but about his example. The strength of the English team consists of creating players who feel the shirt and crest are part of their identity and recognize themselves in the club since they were children; The 22 can be used again in the first team, but only Bellingham can wear it. He arrived at the club when he was eight years old and climbed the steps three at a time, always playing with children much older than him. In the Peruvian magazine Depor, the head of the quarry explained it this way: forging a sense of belonging is the axis of the lower categories. “We always focus on that. We are not in a position where we can offer the financial rewards of some of the big Premier League clubs. But what we can do is take that kid who dreams of playing on the team and help him make that dream a reality.”

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Regarding the latter, both in Dortmund and Madrid, his next stops in his post-adolescence, Bellingham has had the need to quickly claim to be part of the club, one of those players who upon arriving worship the elders, question their fans, They defend their companions and point to the shield. There are those who do all this and it is all they can give: they replace the lack of football with passion. In the case of Bellingham the combination is explosive for Real Madrid: from the anthological 5 chosen (Zidane above all things, but also Redondo) to the character put on the field: if you don’t like my arms in a cross, the celebration I wear doing it since I was 16, I will do it every game, even if I have to score a goal in each one. At the end of the game against Girona, where he gave a fantasy assist and scored the last goal, he told the RMTV cameras that he had no idea when and why he started celebrating: “I don’t know exactly. I started in Birmingham and have continued, but there is no reason.” The inexplicable, so common in football, is behind the natural relief of Cristiano Ronaldo’s celebration in the schoolyards, iconic gestures that remain in the fan’s memory almost as strongly as the goals.

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2023-10-02 03:16:33
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