Few coaches have solved the puzzles that football talent sometimes poses like Carlo Ancelotti. Take Jude Bellingham, for example. The same player who Gareth Southgate was questioned about at the European Championship with England worked for Real Madrid in the European Super Cup to clear up the new uncertainty of this start of the season: the cross-effect of Kroos’ departure and Mbappé’s arrival.
Before the last 16 of the international tournament in Germany, the feeling that Bellingham was causing deep imbalances in the England manager’s plan crystallized. The case was summed up in an opinion piece published in The Guardian: “England need to change, and that means dropping Jude Bellingham.” He argued that the player was trying to do “too many things in midfield”, leading to a conclusion that the author, like some other analysts, saw as inevitable: “The best players are those who can help England win the four games they have left, and Bellingham should consider himself lucky if he is given another chance on Sunday.” He played in the round of 16 that day, and also the quarter-final, semi-final and final, but he was not the answer to the problems that Southgate’s critics pointed out. The opposite was true under Ancelotti.
Against Atalanta, Madrid’s rise to prominence coincided with the point at which Vinicius’ efforts and Bellingham’s start to do more in midfield intersected. In the second half, the Englishman was the Madrid player who touched the ball the most, 42 times, 27% more than in the first, when he had Mendy, Militão, Rüdiger, Courtois, Carvajal, Valverde, Vinicius and Tchouameni ahead of him, according to Opta’s records.
He also did so in more damaging areas: in the first half he only touched the ball once in the opposing area, a control that eluded him, while in the second he did so on seven occasions, more than anyone else. One of them, the assist to Mbappé in the 2-0.
When Madrid signed the Englishman just over a year ago and Benzema announced he was leaving for Saudi Arabia, the coach watched videos of the player at Borussia Dortmund and believed he had found a way out of the seemingly insoluble problem of the Frenchman’s departure, which was not compensated for by the signing of another number nine of his calibre. In the recordings, the Italian glimpsed a prodigious arrival into the area that he later confirmed during pre-season, and which served to sustain the team for long stretches of the season. At the start of this season in Warsaw, Bellingham pointed out that he is also capable of contributing to solving a setback of a different nature.
Kroos was missing from the starting eleven for the Super Cup final, and Mbappé was making his debut. If last year the coach pushed the Englishman to take a step forward, something he insisted on since pre-season training, this time he asked him to retrace part of that path. “I will do whatever Ancelotti wants,” said Bellingham after receiving the award for best player in the Super Cup final. “I will play anywhere, no problem.”
The withdrawal of Kroos, who Ancelotti believed had at least one more good year left in him, caused two problems: they lost their playmaker and also a player in that area, since his place in the starting eleven was occupied by Mbappé, who is much higher up. This last point is behind the concern that the Italian coach mentioned most after the victory: “The most difficult thing is to find a balance with the quality we have up front.” Hence one of his first reflections on Wednesday in the press room: “Although the team did not play well in the first half, they worked well defensively, and this was the most important thing.”
Because in the first 45 minutes, Madrid’s attacking play was rather unstructured, something that Ancelotti said was mainly due to Atalanta’s man-to-man defence: “There were a lot of one-on-one duels and it was difficult to find superiority with possession, so we thought about looking for balls behind the back and it didn’t work out well.” The second half was different, as Bellingham explained: “We had to adjust in the first half and the second was incredible,” he said. “We had a lot of fun.”
His contribution was transformative. The change is summed up by his relationship with Vinicius. In the first half, the Brazilian dropped back to the central areas and from there found the Englishman entering the space. In the second it was the other way around: Bellingham passed to him more. The initial phase of Ancelotti’s plan of looking for passes behind the back and moving less through the middle had not worked, and the Englishman began to colonise that strip, with more control over the ball’s destination. He attempted 22 passes in each half, although in the second he touched the ball much more, choosing where to take the team. If in the first stretch these passes happened mainly on the left flank, in the second he insisted on the central lane, and aimed more at the area.
He knows that his move back will have an effect: “It’s easier to score if I play closer to goal; this season I will have to adapt.” But Ancelotti has a different problem to the one he found with Benzema’s departure. Although he has found the remedy in Bellingham, which Southgate has not yet fully understood. The footballer shares the Italian’s plan: “What I want is to do my best to win games.”
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