'Most complete midfielder' Bellingham ready to take Zidane's Real Madrid crown
Tom Weber
- 1 Dec 2023 07:05 CST
- 4 min read
Jude Bellingham is back in the headlines.
The 20-year-old has returned from his shoulder injury and is back playing like he had been prior to his spell on the sidelines; he hasn't missed a beat. Since coming back into the fold against Cadiz, the English midfielder has two goals and an assist in two games.
Against Napoli in the Champions League, the €103 million summer signing was back to his very best. It was far from an easy fixture for Real Madrid against the struggling reigning Serie A champions, but Bellingham once again stole the show.
For his goal, the ex-Borussia Dortmund man made a darting run into the box to get on the end of a David Alaba long ball. Later on, he put the game beyond doubt, jinking past a Napoli defender before delivering a perfect outside-of-the-boot cross for Joselu to make it 4-2. It was a ball in so good not even the wasteful Spaniard could miss.
Jude Bellingham is the king of the Santiago Bernabeu - for this season at least - and you would be hard-pressed to think of superlatives that haven't been mentioned in connection with the English wonderkid. Carlo Ancelotti, however, perhaps took things to the next level when he compared him to Zinedine Zidane after the Napoli fixture.
Bellingham leaves legends speechless
There are few greater honours for a Real Madrid player than to be compared to the great Frenchman. One of the best to ever play the game, few can match what he used to do on the football pitch - but Bellingham is already outshining Zidane in one area of the game.
"It's difficult to compare two different generations," Ancelotti said. "What I see is [Bellingham's] ability to get into the box. Zidane didn't have that. And the individual quality which Zidane had, Bellingham doesn't have. But that's modern football. Modern football requires physical players like Bellingham, who can cover a lot of the pitch quickly."
"He surprises every day, in every game. Not just us, he's surprising everybody. He is a gift for football. His coach and his teammates are delighted with him, and the fans are delighted with him, but everybody is delighted to see a player with this potential and this positive image."
Fellow goalscorer Rodrygo said of Bellingham after the game: "I don't even have the words. It's a pleasure to play with him." But Bellingham leaves not just the current crop of Los Blancos figures speechless.
AS spoke with several former Real Madrid players to get their thoughts on Bellingham, and the responses paint a clear picture of a man beloved by every Madridista. "It has been a long time since I have seen someone so complete," hailed Pirri, who made north of 400 appearances for Real.
1997 Ballon d'Or runner-up Predrag Mijatovic said: "I still can't believe everything that is happening. Two months of competition and he is already playing and behaving like a veteran."
Guti went even further: “He is the most complete midfielder in modern football...He ticks all the boxes to be a player who marks an era." Perhaps Jude Bellingham will become his generation's Zinedine Zidane.
