In the lead-up to the World Cup, the entrenched hostility that had accompanied Jude Bellingham virtually from his breakthrough at senior level grew more vociferous. Numerous scribes, commentators and one-time professionals doubted whether one of the country’s most gifted footballers could become a divisive presence within the team. The starkest articulation of this position appeared in a Daily Mail article in November 2025, below one of the most discreditable headlines ever to appear in English football: “Leave Jude at home.”
Facing a surge of negative commentary about Bellingham, Ian Wright stepped up to support him during a Stick to Football broadcast. After being extracted, his words swiftly circulated across online football communities and more widely, thanks to both Wright’s frankness and his contextualization of the antagonism Bellingham faces within the longstanding pattern of regulating Black men’s conduct. Wright stated, “Someone like Jude, for some reason, frightens these people,” and continued: “It’s something you’re taught as a Black man … to keep your head down and be, for want of a better word, a humble fucking slave.”
Certainly, there are supposed footballing missteps that have put Bellingham on a direct collision course with the English football establishment. His first “error” was having Birmingham City withdraw his jersey number before his 18th birthday. His second was choosing Borussia Dortmund over England’s top clubs. Then Real Madrid invested an initial sum of €103 million (around £88 million) in him, giving him the iconic No. 5 shirt formerly donned by Zinedine Zidane. All the while, Bellingham has seemed almost completely free of the anxiety that has beset numerous English players overseas. Yet rather than being celebrated as a point of national pride, his achievements in Madrid are often viewed as a subtle rebuttal to the Premier League’s claim to occupy football’s summit. He is transmitted to us as someone who already fits into a global setting.
Though these elements go some way toward clarifying the animus aimed at Bellingham, Wright’s explanation for how he is perceived is fundamentally more compelling. Bellingham’s bearing carries a distinct cultural resonance that, while instantly recognizable to countless Black people in Britain, is interpreted elsewhere as a source of irritation. Growing up, my aunt would direct me to stride with my shoulders squared and head erect, so that I could convey a picture of myself that others might not otherwise be willing to conceive. Later, I realized this guidance was a reiteration of words she had first told herself after emigrating from the Caribbean and entering a community that insisted she had no place there.
It is impossible to say if Bellingham was given comparable counsel – maybe what we’re seeing is simply the unwavering confidence of an elite global athlete – but considering how prevalent this type of cultural legacy is within Black households, it is wholly credible that he was.
English football consistently mines the emotional topography of its past for significance, fixating on its lone victory and innumerable close calls. It also gravitates towards those players it has seen itself reflected in: Bryan Robson, David Beckham, Paul Gascoigne. Probably no one has proven as lasting as that final name. Jack Grealish was temporarily portrayed as Gascoigne’s spiritual heir, and ahead of Euro 2020, Phil Foden bleached his hair to the same peroxide shade Gascoigne sported at Euro 96, intentionally aligning himself with that legacy.
Bellingham reveals the boundaries of this self-recognition process.
England has for a long time fielded outstanding Black footballers. Yet, whether through direct societal rejection – as Paul Gilroy documented in “Race”, Sport and British Society, the exclusion of John Barnes from iconic sports status became “a point of national pride” for a segment of England supporters and prominent voices – the favor shown to Alan Shearer which pushed Andrew Cole into the periphery, or the relentless criticism faced by Raheem Sterling, the national team had never before been comfortable proclaiming a Black player as its emblematic star. However, by delivering the most remarkable personal England displays in tournaments in recent years, Bellingham has made himself tactically essential and the heart, both emotionally and symbolically, of the squad.
The impromptu singalongs of Hey Jude that now accompany England wins provide further proof: a Black player whose identity, appearance and roots present no obstacle to immediate, natural association with Englishness.
Every new generation of Black Britons is molded by the nation even as they transform it. While claiming that a single footballer could dissolve the conflicts that regularly position Black identity and English identity as contradictory would be misguided, Bellingham evidently perceives no clash between them. His most meaningful contribution may be in demonstrating to future cohorts that they need not perceive any conflict either.
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Calum Jacobs wrote A New Formation: How Black Footballers Shaped the Modern Game and established CARICOM magazine.
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