Jude Bellingham is already having an incredible 23/24 season... but is he arguably the best player on the planet right now?
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00:00 I don't think he's going to finish the season on 47 league goals, although at this point I wouldn't
00:05 entirely rule it out, but clearly something is going on between his transfer from Dortmund to
00:09 Madrid. Something is happening with the way he's playing football, which is making him far more
00:13 dangerous in the opposition box. And not just the most surface level way of looking at this,
00:18 this is how Real Madrid have been setting up with Bellingham in the side this season. He has been
00:22 the very tip of the diamond, playing in this number 10 role with a midfield three, not even
00:28 including Modric and Kroos most of the time in behind him. Now just this in of itself is
00:32 incredibly interesting because it's completely different to how he was used at Dortmund. Now
00:36 Dortmund are quite tactically flexible, you would quite often see him on the left of a midfield
00:40 three, the same kind of position you see in Bringlem, but a lot of the time what they would
00:44 do, can my brain figure all this out? Yes it can, is you would be deployed as the right hand side
00:51 in a double pivot of a 4-2-3-1. Now just think about that for a second, like how many examples
00:58 in the history of football can you think of where a top, top team has gone and paid top, top money
01:03 for a player who has predominantly played in a deep midfield role, and then not only stuck them
01:08 immediately in at number 10, but just sort of said, go on, if you want to be the nine as well,
01:13 just feel free. But the thing is, there was a very good reason for Dortmund using him in this
01:18 position, that's because if you just look at it, he's right in the very centre of the pitch. That
01:22 is of all the positions in this lineup, the one who's going to see the ball the most. It's a
01:26 position which allowed him to do all the things he's really good at doing. He can get involved
01:31 in Dortmund's build-up phase when they're working it around the back, he can act as a screen in front
01:35 of the back four, he can get on it, he can drive it further up the pitch, and as play develops and
01:40 situations allow, he can get into this front line and sort of play as a 10 as well. Now you'll have
01:44 heard this a million times by now, the whole reason he had the number 22 when he was coming
01:49 through at Birmingham, because one of his coaches was like, oh wow, you're a great defensive
01:53 midfielder and central midfielder and attacking midfielder. So like a four, an eight and a 10,
01:58 we'll add all those up, but it's kind of a good gag, but also it was completely true. And so
02:04 Dortmund stuck him in a position where every single game he was able to contribute to the play here,
02:09 to the play here, and to the play here, and doing all these jobs combined, he would still post
02:14 eight or nine out of 10 every single week for all these different jobs. But you see,
02:20 here's the thing, right, you've probably got a job, and if you don't now, you definitely remember
02:24 having one. I'm willing to bet you had to do way more in that job than you were actually supposed
02:30 to. Maybe you were hired to do like one thing, which is the way the place worked, ended up having
02:34 to do two or three others sometimes as well. And maybe you, like Bellingham, would give eight or
02:39 nine out of 10 in all these different roles every single day you were there, but in the back of your
02:43 mind, you were probably thinking, if I just focused on the thing I was hired for, the thing I'm really
02:49 good at, I wouldn't be given eight or nine out of 10s everywhere. I could give you a 10 consistently
02:55 at that one thing. And that is, in essence, what Real Madrid have done with Bellingham. Like,
03:00 they've looked at him and thought, yeah, sure, you can contribute in every single area of the pitch,
03:04 but this is Real Madrid. Every other player who's here is here because they are great in that
03:10 position. So let's just give you a job and you can do that instead. And so with the way they have set
03:16 this team up with the midfield diamond, the job they have given Jude Bellingham to do is simply
03:22 kill teams. Bellingham is the 10 in a diamond, sure, but it's also completely accurate to look
03:29 at this as a 4-3-3 with Bellingham right at the top, playing as a false nine and dropping back
03:35 into the space. But if we look at the goals he's already scored for Madrid, these are not the
03:39 opportunities or the chances or even the finishes you would expect of a player playing as a midfielder
03:45 with license to get into the box. They are out and out centre forward goals. His link-up play around
03:51 the box and how he works with the other forwards is exemplary, yes, but he's not holding that
03:56 position. When he sees the kind of gap a centre forward should be filling, he is just filling it.
04:01 And it has led, in the few short months since he's left Dortmund, to creating an entirely different
04:07 player. It's a small sample size, but let me just show you a few select stats from last season's
04:11 Bundesliga and this season's La Liga and you'll see just how drastic this is. So per 90 minutes
04:17 last season in the league, Jude Bellingham was posting 3.7 tackles or interceptions per game,
04:22 and this put him comfortably in the top 10%, possibly even the top 5% of midfielders in Europe
04:28 in that particular stat. He was winning the ball back a lot because that was a major part of his
04:32 role. He was carrying the ball on average about 264 yards every single game, which again puts him
04:38 right in the very top percentage of that bracket across Europe because his job was when he got on
04:43 the ball in deep areas to then help the team move it forward, usually using his dribbling skills.
04:48 Last season he was making about one and a half passes into the penalty area every single game,
04:53 again because he was allowed and encouraged to be in that part of the pitch, but it wasn't his
04:57 main responsibility. And finally, the average distance of all the shots he took in the league
05:02 was 18 yards from goal. So yes, he would get it in the box and yes, he would shoot from range,
05:06 but on average pretty much every chance he was trying to take came from outside or just on the
05:11 edge of the penalty area. So you can visualise this kind of player in your head, can't you?
05:15 He's an all-rounder, he's good at winning the ball back, so he does that a lot, he's really good on
05:19 the ball, so he carries the ball up the pitch a lot, and he's good in the final third as well,
05:23 so he passes the ball into the box and occasionally he'll have a pop from distance.
05:27 He does a little bit of everything. Now while it is a small sample size, I'll grant you,
05:30 let's just compare those numbers to this season so far. Per 90, Jude Bellingham is making about
05:36 1.2 tackles or interceptions per game. He is carrying the ball on average 117 yards. He's
05:43 making 3.2 passes into the penalty area per 90, and finally the average distance of his shots
05:50 is just under 10 yards. And then obviously just to add on top of that, he scored
05:55 five goals in four games. That is a profile of a player who can win the ball back, sure,
06:00 but he doesn't worry about it, and he can carry the ball up the pitch, sure, but he doesn't worry
06:04 about it. What he does worry about is how he can f*** you up. And this is a grotesque
06:08 oversimplification, but if you just look at the formation, you can see exactly what it is
06:13 Real Madrid are trying to do. They have locked this area down, they have taken care of all the
06:17 jobs here, and they have even split the two attacking players. They have put Jude Bellingham
06:22 in the most important area of the pitch when it comes to creating chances and scoring goals,
06:27 and just said, "Go where you want, do what you want." And the results, as you've seen,
06:32 have been incredible. But the thing is, my dear friends, none of that makes him the best player
06:38 in the world. He's just having a really good attacking run, and loads of other number 10s
06:42 will do similar things, post similar numbers, have similar highlight reels across the course
06:48 of the season. So why then is Bellingham so different? It's because it isn't actually
06:53 accurate to say they've given him a free roll as a number 10. Like they have, he pushes forward
06:58 into the box, he drops wide, he drops into the midfield, he has complete freedom to do what he
07:02 wants to do in that role, but he's actually got complete freedom to just do what he wants to do
07:08 full stop. Bellingham isn't making as many tackles or interceptions per game, but the ones he is
07:14 making are absolutely vital. And likewise, he isn't getting on the ball in deep areas and driving
07:19 it up the pitch as much as he was, but when he is doing it, it's because the game sort of demands
07:24 he does it. Real Madrid are struggling to play through or go around, so he just takes himself
07:28 out of this position and goes where he needs to go. At Real Madrid, his number one job is to look
07:34 for goal scoring opportunities, either for himself or for his teammates, but he also has the license
07:39 to simply read the entire game state and decide where he needs to be to have the biggest possible
07:45 impact. And just that like staggering range of ability, that power to exert your influence across
07:52 a game, regardless of what state it's currently in, whether you're attacking or defending, whether
07:56 you're under pressure or on top, to just look across the entire pitch and think, where can I
08:01 make the maximum possible impact here? And then be in a system designed to allow you to do that,
08:07 that legitimately puts you in the conversation for best player in the world right now. And even if
08:13 you haven't watched Real Madrid, there was a really good example of this in the England game.
08:17 Like England kind of want to be a 4-3-3, but he was definitely playing more as a 10, albeit in a
08:21 totally different system, but he gets on the ball wide left because that's where he felt he needed
08:27 to impact the game. The center of the pitch was really congested, there wasn't too much he could
08:30 do over there, so he recognized the space developing and he went out to try and make
08:34 something happen. But as soon as he does make that thing happen, he lays the ball off to Phil
08:38 Foden, he then reassesses the situation and realizes that some space has developed right in
08:44 the most dangerous area of the pitch. So rather than doing what a number 10 would do in that
08:48 situation, which is either keep your position out wide in case the ball gets recycled or move to the
08:53 edge of the box to kind of get yourself set in case the ball gets turned over, he just recognizes
08:58 it and he goes into the center forward area of the pitch, the ball breaks loose and he scores.
09:03 And that's the thing about most of the goals he scored this season, like none of them represent
09:07 like technical brilliance or particularly mind-blowing to watch, but they do represent
09:12 the sort of striker's instinct you would expect a 30-year-old 200 goal forward to have. And he's
09:20 a 20-year-old who last season was playing in a double pivot. Anyway, I'm going to stop there
09:24 because I could genuinely spend about half an hour just talking about the handful of games he's
09:28 played this season. He is easily the most fascinating, interesting, exciting must-watch
09:34 player in world football right now. And he's English, so that's nice. As ever though, please
09:38 do head down to the comments and let us know your thoughts on his opening few performances for Real
09:42 Madrid as well as the two England games, because one was great and one wasn't, so there's a whole
09:46 other thing to be said there. And while you're here, please do subscribe to 442 on YouTube. We
09:50 are so close to 442 subscribers and me, a nerd, really wants that. Meantime though, grab me on
09:58 Instagram threads, @AdamCleary, C-L-E-A-Y, 442 socials in the corner. We are on the last week
10:05 of the beautiful Newcastle United issue. Please do buy that from all good retailers and the crap
10:09 ones as well. And until next time, I've been Adam Cleary, that's been Jude Bellingham,
10:14 and I'll see you soon. Goodbye.