Why Jude Bellingham Feels like England’s “Homeless” Superstar

Who else? — Bellingham celebrates after scoring at Euro 2024. Photo: PA Images

There is something odd about the way England talks about Jude Bellingham.

For me, he is the most important English footballer of his generation, yet it doesn’t really feel like he belongs here. Because he sits outside the usual Premier League tribes, he is left oddly exposed when the national conversation turns his way.

You can see it in the rhythm of recent international breaks. One flashpoint is enough, whether that’s his omission or his reaction to a substitution and suddenly we are back in the same place, questioning his character more than his football.

The reaction to England’s 2–0 win in Albania on Sunday was the latest example. A routine result in a World Cup qualifier became another round of slow motion replays and character assessments built around a booking, a half time shirt swap and Bellingham’s face when Thomas Tuchel substituted him.

Watching it all unfold yesterday, I kept coming back to the same thought: Jude Bellingham is England’s “homeless” superstar. On paper that sounds absurd for a player who starts for Real Madrid, but the kind of “home” I am talking about only really exists inside English football.

What a “home” looks like in English football

Saka, Kane and Foden all grew up with a set of fans now ready to fight their corners. Photos: X.com

Within English football, the biggest players are backed by an ecosystem of their club, its fanbase and representative voices in the media.

Bukayo Saka has Arsenal and one of the most vocal online fanbases you’ll find, ready to explain and defend him in detail. Phil Foden and Harry Kane are attached to clubs that sit at the heart of the Premier League story, and have long since been absorbed into the wider English football narrative as central characters.

Liverpool’s stars live in a different kind of machine. I always joke about the “Scouse media mafia” — loyal ex-players and journalists of a certain vintage who grew up during the club’s years of dominance who now occupy studios, column inches and podcasts. It’s tongue in cheek, but there is truth in the idea that Liverpool and its players rarely go unrepresented when narratives start to form.

None of this makes players completely untouchable. But when the temperature rises, there is a clear place their story “belongs” with a club, a city, a fanbase and a cluster of aligned voices around them. There are people and institutions with a stake in how they are spoken about.

Bellingham doesn’t have that ring of protection. He is a boy from Stourbridge who came through at Birmingham City, a respected club but one with little sway in shaping national discourse. From there, he made the decision most young English players may speak about but rarely follow through on, he chose Borussia Dortmund over Manchester United, then chose Real Madrid over Liverpool.

Bellingham in his early days at Birmingham City. Photo: GETTY Images

If he had anchored himself at Old Trafford or Anfield first, I suspect the tone around him in England would be different. A section of the domestic football public would see him as “one of theirs” and that comes with defenders.

Instead, he has built his career away from the league that dominates our weekends. He is established in the England set-up but still hasn’t made his Premier League debut, rare for a player with his status.

For Jude, there is no home crowd in England seeing his good and bad days every week, no long-standing relationship with a fanbase beyond those at St Andrew’s with the platform to back his corner. If he were tied to a domestic giant, a manager speaking several times a week, quiet briefings to reporters, club-aligned pundits and a noisy fanbase would all help explain his off-nights and snappy reactions; instead, when he has a bad night for the national team there is no obvious “home” audience here to smooth the edges or insist on the whole picture.

In an England shirt he belongs to everyone and no one.

The Real Madrid factor: global club, distant shelter

Galactico: Bellingham salutes Madrid fans after scoring. Photograph: GETTY Images

I can already hear the obvious objection, how can a Real Madrid starter be “homeless”?

Bellingham wears one of the most powerful shirts in the sport and is already central to the next iteration of a club that prides itself on being home to the game’s biggest stars.

In Spain, he feels completely rooted. The local media tell one story, filtered through the politics of Real Madrid vs Barcelona rivalry. The club do not hesitate in putting him front and centre in everything they do.

But that reality in Spain does not translate into protection in England.

Over here, Real Madrid is a glamorous backdrop rather than a stakeholder in the day to day football conversation. Madrid can manage the narrative in La Liga and the Champions League. They are not going to spend energy firefighting English talk dissecting his body language in Tirana.

When you are fair game for everyone

“Just business” Tuchel acknowledging Bellingham after his substitution vs Albania. Photo: PA Images

The Albania game shows how this plays out. On the pitch, England won without much fuss. Bellingham did not dominate, but he was not a liability either. His only “crime” was his reaction when he was substituted near the end.

Tuchel’s comments afterwards were firm but none of that surprised me. When he took the England job, I wrote about what his personality might mean for the dressing room and for Bellingham specifically:

“Tuchel isn’t a shrinking violet and enjoys challenging his players to bring the best out of them, I expect him to platform the similarly cocksure Jude Bellingham in an attacking midfield role charged with being a vocal and visible talisman for the team.”

In other words, this was always likely to be a delicate relationship between two strong characters. Tuchel isn’t the sort of manager who shrinks from confrontation and Bellingham is not the type to meekly fade into the background.

When the pack can’t reach you

“Not on my watch” Ian Wright came to Bellingham’s defence. Photo: GETTY Images

What really caught my attention on this occasion was one of our game’s biggest voices using his platform to speak about this.

Ian Wright saw the criticism gathering pace and stepped in. In a comment on Instagram, he said the media “need to create this kind of controversy” because there is nothing else to fill the gap before the World Cup and that some people “hate the fact that they can’t reach him” or “negatively influence his club career like they’ve done with so many others before him.”

Coming from someone who has watched this cycle for decades, it landed differently.

Wright’s point is simple, Bellingham is harder to reach than most of his England team-mates and that makes him easier to turn into a story. There is no club gatekeeper pulling the conversation back towards nuance when it starts to spiral.

The price of choosing something different

Leader — Bellingham wearing the Captain’s armband in his Dortmund days. Photo: GETTY Images

Dortmund gave Bellingham something most Premier League clubs would have struggled to offer at 17, real minutes with responsibility and the space to make mistakes without being eaten alive. Madrid has given him a stage that is unmatched in terms of global visibility. The choices have taken him exactly where a player of his talent belongs. The trade off, in my opinion is mostly about control of narratives.

As an England international, if you build your career outside the Premier League, you step away from some of its noise but also some of its protections.

For most people in England, the live experience of Jude Bellingham is a handful of international matches and the big Champions League nights they happen to catch. They’re not emotionally invested in his club season the way they are in their own team’s star player.

That is how you end up with single moments, a brash comment or a tetchy substitution standing in for a whole person.

His route is exactly what we claim to want from young English players, ironically. We say they should be brave enough to leave, to learn a different culture and escape the bubble then come back better for it. Bellingham did all of that. We just haven’t quite worked out how to receive him now that he has.

Where “home” might actually be?

Home? — Bellingham on a visit to Birmingham City’s stadium. Photo: Instagram

So where is “home” for Jude Bellingham?

It might be that number 22 shirt hanging at Birmingham City, retired in his honour before he was even out of his teens. It might be in the Real Madrid dressing room, where he has walked in and made himself a reference point. It could also be in the hearts of every England fan if he leads the country to glory at next summer’s World Cup.

He does not seem to get the automatic benefit of the doubt that usually comes when a player is fully claimed by a domestic tribe.

Maybe that changes if he ever comes back to the Premier League. We risk his international career becoming a running argument between those who see the Madrid superstar and those who fixate on a strop and the subsequent headlines.

For now, Jude Bellingham remains England’s “homeless” superstar. A player who took every step we claim to admire and is still waiting for the conversation at home to catch up with the reality of who he is.