Around Thomas Tuchel’s squad, Jude Bellingham is now seen as having “matured”. How couldn’t he, when he’s already twice been a match-winner in England’s World Cup 2026 campaign?
Bellingham is stepping up in the way stars do.
Either way, the squad chemistry is very different to Euro 2024, when there was a lot of commentary about how the then-21-year-old had been absorbing the 10-part Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance.
Certain parallels with Jordan were clear. Here was a precocious attacking talent who wasn’t afraid to show he knows how good he is, but also to starkly tell teammates when they weren’t up to standard.
Ian Wright, who has proven especially insightful on Bellingham, speaks about how the midfielder is more like “an American athlete in his confidence.”
Bellingham, who turned 23 on Monday, is willing to take all of this further. The very curation of his career, from choice media appearances to commercial contracts, is highly US-influenced. One sponsorship deal is understood to involve equity, something unheard of in the UK.
You can of course walk up to Times Square during this World Cup and see Bellingham in lights, or in that adidas advertisement with Timothee Chalamet.
This is about so much more than fine details of financial deals, though. It is about, as writer Wiliam C Rhoden put it in his bestselling book Forty Million Dollar Slaves, “attitude”.
Wright describes Bellingham as having “that kind of confidence saying I write my own scripts… he’s happy to let people know ‘I’m that good, and if the pressure moments come I’m ready to step up’”.
Deep within all of this energy – which can bring tensions – is something else. Bellingham is not just adopting the profile of an American sports superstar, after all. He is, by extension, adopting that of the Black American sports superstar.
The LeBron James. The Jordan.
And, from that, Wright openly wondered whether Britain is “ready for a Black superstar”.
That comment came in the midst of another public debate about Bellingham’s body language to teammates and Tuchel, having previously been dropped by the England manager.
The very discussion was proof of Bellingham’s divisiveness. You can see it in media headlines and social media comments.
Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka, an associate professor at UCL and editor of the book Black Arsenal, is adamant that Bellingham is viewed differently. “It’s even in the trivial things,” he says.
Dr David L. Andrews, a professor at the University of Maryland who has done numerous studies on sport including Deconstructing Michael Jordan, concurs.
“I partly think about Bellingham what I do with Meghan Markle,” explains Dr Andrews. “If she wasn’t Black, would she be getting what she gets. I think it’s instructive how people respond, and it says more about them than what they’re talking about.”
Which is why English society’s response is so fascinating, and the very staging of this World Cup so timely, in terms of where Bellingham’s career is.
He is arguably a unique British footballer in how he adopts this profile, and here he is, in the home of it all.
“Even his celebration is now a metaphor,” Dr Chijioke Nwonka says. “It’s like he’s saying ‘I’m embracing the platform but also the visibility of me.’”
And now, as the World Cup knockouts get under way, Bellingham actively wants to be the player to end England’s long wait for a trophy. That of course brings the possibility of disappointment, and backlash, but he is not afraid of confronting that.
The attitude is rather… American, if also very much Bellingham’s own.
You can even extend some of that sense of timeliness to the very site of England’s first knockout game, and the opposition.
Atlanta is immersed in the United States’ racial history more than most cities, and a huge proportion of slaves were abducted from the area now covered by the Democratic Republic of Congo. You can see it in the National Center for Civil and Human Rights here.
US society’s constant confrontation with that past – even amid many worsening problems – has at least informed the archetype of the Black superstar in a way that has not been possible in the UK.
“America has been rooted in a racial polarisation from the word go,” Dr Andrews says.
A pop historiography argument could even posit that American openness – a willingness to tell strangers your life story – has fed into this.
“There’s a lack of reticence,” Dr Chijioke Nwonka concludes.
Dr Andrews’ initial doctoral dissertation argues that the Jordan model actually evolved out of Ronald Reagan’s America, even if other factors – such as the rise of the Chicago Bulls and Nike – were crucial.
“It was a celebration of a hard-bodied American hyper individualism,” he explains. “Jordan’s race was arguably obscured, and I do think that’s changed.
“I think in the contemporary US sports ecosystem, Blackness is much more visible, and much more commercially mobilised.”
Dr Chijioke Nwonka says that is why The Last Dance is so relevant. “The conditions were primed for Jordan to become a phenomenon. The NBA is the most prominent exemplar of this, about uplift, arrival, the American Dream, all of these things are heavily encoded in sport culture.”
Rhoden describes how all of this integrated in a different way through the very evolution of the idea of “attitude”.
“In 1957, ‘having an attitude was the kiss of death for African American athletes,” he writes. “‘Attitude’ was one of the racial buzzwords to describe Black athletes in the negative.
“Four decades later, Madison Avenue has converted ‘attitude’ into a positive. Attitude is good. Attitude is hip and bold.”
Enter Bellingham, albeit – as Dr Chijioke Nwonka puts it – “external to British society”.
“All of Bellingham’s predecessors, John Barnes, Ashley Cole, Raheem Sterling, they had to go through rites of passage in English football,” he explains. “But Bellingham became an anomaly, coming through German football and Real Madrid.
“So we’ve come to understand him through tournament football, once every two years, and that’s a whole new sphere for British society.”
That’s also a British society, Dr Andrews argues, that “hasn’t yet come to terms with the racialised nature of English football, certainly since the 1970s”.
It can be seen in pronounced contrasts.
Whereas Black players represent around 43 per cent of the Premier League, it’s nowhere close to that with coaching staff, boardrooms, England’s travelling fanbase and – naturally – those of us in the media.
“We haven’t had that model, like Bellingham, who is much more alive to American popular culture parlances,” Dr Chijioke Nwonka says. “The UK, it’s come out of a culture of trade unions, of sameness.”
Some reaction is admittedly more immediate. Former teammates and opposition players have privately spoken about how Bellingham’s – yes – “attitude” just annoyed them. This was arguably visible in the confrontation during the 0-0 draw with Ghana.
This is actually very Real Madrid, as well as American, but it’s not necessarily very English. Hence Wright talking about how Bellingham “is too uppity” for some people.
“That Irish term of begrudgery is actually quite a good word for what Wright describes,” Dr Andrews says. “When people refer to how it’s not the English way of doing things, it is about the white way of doing things.”
Wright elaborated by describing how N’Golo Kante was loved because “he’s a humble Black man”.
“Someone like Jude frightens these people because of his capability and the inspiration he can give.
“Because if you are outspoken, Black, and playing to that level and not caring, that frightens certain people.”
Dr Chijioke Nwonka argues the racial politics here are covert, rather than like in America, where it’s overt.
“There are subtle ways and camouflages that bring in race politics for Black players,” he proffers.
“Ashley Cole was possibly the greatest ever left-back but his personal life was spoken about – a social criticism. Sol Campbell, too unorthodox. We know what Sterling’s attracted. There’s always a tut.”
Now, there’s a lot of admiration for Bellingham within the squad, and that might attract followers of his own. Dr Andrews cites Ben Carrington of USC Annenberg, who wrote about how American Black culture is now shaping Britain’s, through “music, dress, dance, sport – but in a British type of way.
“You saw it during Black Lives Matter, where I think Blackness was taken up much more effectively by the Premier League.
“It had a negligible political effect but I think it brought Black identities within sport much more to the fore.”
By the same token, the central thesis of Rhoden’s book cautions against going too far with this in the States.
“Every African American accomplishment in sports has – for more than two centuries now – triggered a knee-jerk backlash from forces within the white majority.”
Dr Andrews meanwhile points to a lot of the language around the draft system, and how “it’s been likened to a modern slave market where bodies are evaluated and people talk about traditional values blah blah”.
“But I don’t think it’s as crudely expressed as before.”
Another difference is how central that superstar profile now is.
“American pop culture almost demands from these superstars, it requires you to be something removed from everyday society,” Dr Chijioke Nwonka.
And now, Bellingham demands more from England. Another undercurrent of his international career has been over his place in various “leadership groups”, of how this is still Harry Kane’s team rather than his.
Many in football nevertheless believe that it is Bellingham’s very brashness, that new mentality, that is actually required to finally lead this team over the line.
That can be seen in the key moments of this campaign so far, the goals against Croatia and Panama. It’s all quite Jordan, all very “clutch”, as they say in American sports.
It may be the culture around the English team that has to mature, as much as its young star.
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