There is a headline from November 2025 that will not be easily forgotten. A Daily Mail feature urged England to simply leave Jude Bellingham at home ahead of the World Cup. It was, by any measure, a remarkable thing to publish about one of the most talented footballers this country has ever produced — a player Real Madrid trusted with the No 5 shirt once worn by Zinedine Zidane, and for whom they paid an initial €103 million.

Yet the headline was not entirely surprising. As Calum Jacobs argues in a searching piece for the Guardian, Bellingham has faced a sustained and particular form of hostility almost from the moment he first pulled on an England shirt. Writers, pundits and former professionals questioned his character, his attitude, his effect on squad morale. The charge sheet was long on implication and short on specifics.

Ian Wright had heard enough. Speaking on Stick to Football, he placed the criticism in a wider historical context, arguing that Bellingham's self-assurance — the straight back, the unapologetic confidence — unsettled people in ways that had less to do with football than with something older and uglier. "Someone like Jude, for some reason, frightens these people," Wright said. His remarks spread rapidly because they named what many had felt but few in mainstream football coverage had been willing to say aloud.

A Different Kind of England Player

To understand why Bellingham provokes such a reaction, it helps to understand what English football has traditionally asked of its footballers. The players in whom the nation has most readily recognised itself — Bryan Robson, Paul Gascoigne, David Beckham — shared a certain emotional transparency. They were beloved partly because they were legible, their feelings worn visibly and on familiar terms.

England has capped brilliant Black footballers across every generation. Yet none has ever been cast as the defining figurehead of the national team. Jacobs's argument is that this is not accidental, and that Bellingham's particular deportment — the composure, the absence of the self-doubt that has consumed so many English players abroad — is read in some quarters not as an asset but as an affront.

His career choices have compounded the unease. Birmingham City retired his squad number before he had turned 18. He chose Borussia Dortmund over English clubs when the offer came. Then he went to Madrid and thrived, appearing genuinely at home in a way that challenges the Premier League's preferred self-image as the unquestionable summit of world football. Bellingham was already global before England had fully decided what to make of him.

The World Cup Changes Everything

Whatever the doubters argued, the tournament has provided its own verdict. Bellingham scored in England's quarter-final victory over Norway in Miami on 11 July, a goal that extended his already significant contribution to the campaign. He has become, in real time, exactly the kind of totemic figure around whom a major tournament narrative is built.

That matters beyond the purely sporting. If English football has long searched its own emotional history for meaning — returning again and again to 1966 and the litany of near-misses since — then Bellingham represents a different kind of self-recognition. Not a repetition of the Gascoigne template, but something new: a player who carries himself on his own terms and asks no one's permission to do so.

The market, understandably, has shifted firmly in England's favour as the latter stages approach. More significantly, the conversation around the team has shifted too. The calls to leave Bellingham at home look not merely wrong but faintly embarrassing now, a relic of a debate that the football itself has settled.

England have had great Black players. They have not, until now, had one positioned as the nation's standard-bearer — the player around whom an entire campaign coheres, and in whom the country is being asked, however reluctantly by some, to recognise itself. That Bellingham has achieved this in spite of the campaign against him rather than with its support makes the achievement considerably more remarkable.

Frequently asked

Why was Jude Bellingham criticised before the 2026 World Cup?
A number of pundits, writers and former professionals questioned whether Bellingham was good for England's squad harmony, with one Daily Mail article in November 2025 going so far as to suggest England should leave him out of the squad entirely.
What did Ian Wright say in defence of Jude Bellingham?
On Stick to Football, Wright argued that the hostility directed at Bellingham reflected a historical pattern of policing Black men's behaviour, suggesting that Bellingham's confidence and self-assurance made certain people uncomfortable for reasons beyond football.
How has Jude Bellingham performed at the 2026 World Cup?
Bellingham scored in England's quarter-final against Norway in Miami on 11 July 2026 and has been one of the central figures of England's tournament run, cementing his status as the team's key player.