In the more fractious moments of England’s Euro 2024 campaign, Jude Bellingham was lambasted for trying to do it all on his own. Examining the teamsheet in Greece on Thursday night, you wondered whether he might have to.
There was no Harry Kane, dropped by an outgoing, emboldened Lee Carsley, and no Bukayo Saka, Jack Grealish, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Declan Rice or Trent Alexander-Arnold either. No other attack-minded player at all, in fact, who had ever started a tournament game.
The deputies, not to denigrate them, were a raw bunch. Against an in-form Greece, in a must-win (ideally by two) game in a hostile arena, here was Noni Madueke making his first international start and Curtis Jones an overdue debut. Anthony Gordon, for all his obvious threat, had never scored or made an international goal. Ollie Watkins, despite his super-sub summer, had never started a game of as much consequence.
So strap-in, you thought, for one of those all-everything Bellingham displays, Bugs Bunny not just playing all the bases, but flogging hot dogs, popping up on Kiss Cam and singing Take Me Out To The Ballgame, too.
Instead, what we got was something more mature, more measured and, for the most part, all the better for it.
Given freedom to interpret his No10 role, Bellingham played with an easy authority, picked his moments and read the changing state of the game beautifully.
In the early exchanges, as Madueke and Gordon went to work, he moved the ball quickly, feeding them at every opportunity, including releasing the Chelsea man to create Watkins’ opening goal.
On commentary, Lee Dixon remarked that Kane must’ve been spewing to at last see two flying wingers - “legs” is the collective noun - running off an England striker that was not him. But in preferring a No9 who likewise runs hard and straight, dragging defenders towards their own goal, Carsley provided Bellingham with room to play.
Only for one brief period in the first-half did England cede control, but with Greece growing, Bellingham was smart. He dropped in alongside Jones and Conor Gallagher, demanded more touches of the ball in his own half and on one typically defiant gallop up the right, dragged a receding team out of that old, bad habit.
The goal that wasn’t his might as well have been. It was made by that familiar, single-minded drive towards the area of most danger, the heels kicking up like an Ethiopian track runner, flicking mud into the face of the defender chasing in vain. Off the post, off Odysseas Vlachodimos and England’s job done, even before Jones’ flourish.
The Liverpool midfielder, a standout on his bow, said afterwards that Bellingham sitting in had given him licence to make the penalty area, when England might have been preoccupied with preserving a two-goal lead.
“A lot was made of the lads who weren’t here but the lads who were here, who showed up, were amazing,” Bellingham said at full-time, a pointed remark, if not quite as sharp as Kane’s ahead of kick-off. “There would have been a million and one excuses if we didn’t play well.”
Beat Ireland at Wembley on Sunday and England will have secured promotion back to the top-flight of the Nations League and provided Thomas Tuchel with the clean-break, one-tournament focus he craves.
What, then, does the German do with Bellingham when he belatedly arrives in January?
This advanced role, preferred by Gareth Southgate in the summer and bestowed almost out of necessity by Carsley, still looks the 21-year-old’s best. His start to the campaign at Real Madrid has been quieter since being shuffled back in midfield, in part to accommodate the arrival of Kylian Mbappe.
Playing No10 for England, though - rather than deeper alongside Rice - would add further wood and preserve to what is already a sticky logjam. If it is accepted now that England need a direct, pacy specialist on the left-wing, then it might even mean space for only one of Palmer, Foden and Saka in the side.
For all he will have learned from Carsley’s superstar fudge in the reverse fixture, Tuchel, at least at the outset, will surely be more adventurous than that.
