Real Madrid’s No 5 won them the Champions League against German opposition on British soil with a magnificent goal. But at Hampden Park, not Wembley; in 2002, not 2024; when it was Zinedine Zidane, not Jude Bellingham. A stunning volley against Bayer Leverkusen can still feel fresh, but it came the year before Bellingham’s birth.
In one respect, Bellingham is Zidane’s successor. In another, Dani Carvajal is. Real can win Champions League finals with extraordinary goals from remarkable players, as Gareth Bale can testify. Or they can win them with defenders applying the final touch from set-pieces, as Sergio Ramos proved. Or, in the 2020s, they can win them with Vinicius Junior strikes. The common denominator, almost the inevitability, is that Real win them. And so, at 20, Jude Bellingham joins Real’s list of Champions League winners. They are less a band than an army, given the size of them.
The near guarantee of glory is a reason players join Real. Yet Bellingham is not one to accept destiny as much as shape it. Even on what had started to feel like one of his poorest performances for Real, he ended with an assist in the biggest game of his life. Vinicius Junior’s second goal, seeing off a spirited Borussia Dortmund, came courtesy of Bellingham’s pass. It helped that Ian Maatsen had inadvertently picked the Brummie out; Real are the team who invariably make opponents pay for errors on such a stage, as Loris Karius knows to his cost.
But the nature of Bellingham is that, even when playing badly, he had twice threatened to be a scorer. He ghosted in behind the Dortmund defence, agonisingly close to heading in Vinicius’ cross. He delayed too long before shooting to allow Nico Schlotterbeck to deflect just wide. Perhaps it is part of the reinvention of Bellingham: from middle-third maestro at Dortmund to final-third specialist for Real. But maybe it taps into an essential sense at his new club. Many of the Real greats were moments players: they did not knit a game together but they did decide it. Bellingham has acquired that knack at the Bernabeu, too.
It was almost his moment at Wembley. It invariably was before Christmas. He carried Real for half a season; no wonder, perhaps, that he then had a shoulder injury. He has not reached the same levels since. He did not look fully fit. England face the prospect of a diminished Bellingham at Euro 2024. Yet Real know a diminished Bellingham can still be deadly. He seemed to be labouring; not lacking in effort but short of sharpness. But Carlo Ancelotti left him on the pitch until a two-goal lead was secured, trusting in a talisman.
By the break, his most prominent contribution when ambushed by an interloper, a pitch invader pausing play within a minute to get a selfie with Bellingham. The temptation was to say he got closer to the newly crowned LaLiga player of the season than many a defender has this year. By half-time, it felt as though the trespasser had exerted a rather bigger impact on the game than Bellingham. But the second half was different.
So a reunion offered vindication for Bellingham. He had captained Dortmund in the knockout stages of the Champions League as a teenager; yet the prospect of winning it in their colours felt faint. Like Erling Haaland, he instead got his medal the year after he bade farewell to the Westfalenstadion.
They have reshaped Dortmund by leaving. About a fifth of the Bellingham windfall went on Marcel Sabitzer and he was the dynamic presence in the midfield before the break, surging through the inside-right channel Bellingham was meant to protect. The Austrian is no one’s idea of a wunderkind. The 30-year-old is not a generational player; he is a generation older than Bellingham. He was a pragmatic pick-up. As he excelled, the impossible felt possible.
Instead, one romantic tale belonged to Toni Kroos; in the final game of his Real career, his record-equalling sixth Champions League came with the aid of a waft of his right boot, his corner bringing Carvajal’s opener. Another was Joselu’s and, on the final whistle, Bellingham headed straight to the semi-final hero, who attended the 2022 final as a fan. He bowed in mock homage to Ancelotti, who added a fifth Champions League as a manager to two as a player.
Another Real legend brought the trophy out. The spectre of Zidane had loomed over Bellingham long before then. A byproduct of the Galacticos policy was that Real rebranded a traditionally defensive number for the Frenchman because 10 was already taken by Luis Figo. Their most iconic No 5 used to operate off the left in the kind of compromise Real adopt because they have too many deluxe talents; after a mid-season rejig, so does Bellingham. But while Zidane had his hands on the silverware at the start of the night, Bellingham did by the end.
