Jude Bellingham has been given the next step he needs to take to become great.
Jude Bellingham, who is only 20, looks like an experienced athlete whose job has been planned since he was a kid.
He had no trouble making the switch from his old team, Birmingham, to Borussia Dortmund, which is one of the best places in Europe for young players to work out. His big break came when he joined Real Madrid.
His rise has sometimes seemed like it was all thought out, but his show at Wembley on Saturday will have been the only time it really felt like it was happening.
Bellingham did great in his first season with Real Madrid. He was named the best player in La Liga and lead them to the title. Right now he has the chance to win the biggest prize in club football. He can do it at home against his old team.
There are great odds for this new Galactico to win the Champions League so soon after joining Real Madrid. It would feel like another step on his way to becoming one of the best players of all time.
Bellingham will be a star for England at the European Championship this summer, as if that chance wasn’t enough. If everything goes as planned, he could help Gareth Southgate’s highly expected team win the event: that would be history.
If he won either or both of the awards, he would be the favourite to win the Ballon d’Or in 2024. To go over this one more time, Bellingham has long seemed destined to be named the world’s best player because he is so good, tough, and mature. People who really like him, though, would say that he is ahead of plan.
To keep this in mind, Bellingham joined Real Madrid for games like this one on Saturday. Although he has never been there before, the Spanish team is trying to win the European Cup for a record 15th time and make them even more dominant. Manager Carlo Ancelotti is also looking for a seventh title as both a player and a coach.
And even though Gareth Bale has won five European Cups and been a big part of the finals, he was never the star at the Bernabeu.
At Real Madrid, Bellingham is already a star, but Bale has always been second fiddle to Cristiano Ronaldo. Bale, Steve McManaman, and even David Beckham, who never won the Champions League with the team, were not. The player is very important to Ancelotti’s team, and even though he is young, his friends treat him with respect.
Bellingham will get help from Federico Valverde, Eduardo Camavinga, and Toni Kroos, who will play his last club game on Saturday. The English star will play as a high No. 10 ahead of Rodrygo and Vinicius Jr.
Dortmund, coached by Edin Terzic, is a big threat, but they kept Kylian Mbappe out of both legs of their semi-final match against Paris Saint-Germain, so they’ll think they can keep Bellingham and his teammates out too.
However, Madrid is very good at this game, which makes it look like they will always win. This is very clear in their late win over Bayern Munich in the semi-finals.
Jadon Sancho, who is going back to Wembley for the first time since England lost the Euro 2020 final in a shootout, wants to make things right because he is going there for the first time since then.
Sancho had to eat and work at Manchester United by himself until January. He has felt much better since going back to Dortmund on loan, though. Sancho has set his future and image in stone, so it doesn’t matter what happens on Saturday. The way he played in the first leg of their semi-final showed that he can still change the game at the top level.
Kroos will leave Madrid after 10 years with the team. At the same time, Dortmund’s last game will be without their popular German player Marco Reus.
Both of them are about to retire, which makes for a great individual story that could have an impact on tomorrow’s attl˽. The most interesting thing is Bellingham’s steady rise.