What He Sacrificed to Succeed

It was always abundantly clear that Jude Bellingham was going to go very far in the game.

From standing out, a class apart, for Stourbridge Juniors, to scoring liberally for his school team, to joining Birmingham’s academy aged just eight, the midfielder strolled down every pathway, a whole level above his peers.

He trained with the Under-14s when only ten, making them laugh by nutmegging them or flicking the ball over heads and darting around. It became almost a badge of honour to have been ‘done’ by the precocious kid. He was fast-tracked to the club’s under-16s set-up when still only 13.

With a heightened skillset, and the application of that skillset that made everything he did appear easy, it was always blazingly obvious that Birmingham had a future superstar in their midst. The coaches knew it. His team-mates knew it. It was simply fated to be.

Yet, this cast-iron certainty rubs up against a bigger truth, which is that each and every year, up and down the country, there are lots of Jude Bellinghams who sign for academies. They too possess enormous natural talent. They too are supposedly destined for greatness.

How many of them go on to fulfil their potential, consistently excelling through every level to the point of ultimately joining Real Madrid for €133.9m while being nominated for a Ballon d’Or on three occasions before the age of 23? Only one.

It takes infinitely more than mere ability – even rare quantities of it – to become truly elite. The human must grow in direct relation to the player.

A Legend Before His Time: How the Hype Grew

Before we explore this further, it’s well worth acknowledging the sheer volume of hype that accompanied Bellingham’s rise, because learning to deal with such pressure and high expectation – to absorb it and even use it to fuel motivation – goes a long way to explaining what sets this particular individual apart.

On one occasion, when coming through at Birmingham, a mock press conference was arranged ahead of a crucial youth match against Liverpool. Set-up entirely for the youngster’s benefit, questions were put to him about the forthcoming contest, as well as bigger topics being discussed, touching on his future in the game.

One of his former coaches, Mike Dodd, was involved in that and elsewhere Dodd consistently sought to place difficulties in the emerging talent’s way, challenging him to overcome them.

The Dodds Method: To build up resilience in their prodigy, matches were sometimes organised that had Bellingham play for a side with only ten players.

When Bellingham made his first-team debut for the Blues, aged just 16 years and 38 days, an awful lot of work had been done in the years prior - by both the club and player - to ensure that he was ready. Ready to become generational.  

Constructing A Champion: Laser-focused Dedication and Essential Arrogance

It’s interesting to note that Bellingham has been described as being ‘cheeky’ by former coaches recalling the young boy coming through the system. He has also been compared to Tigger from Winnie the Pooh for his boundless enthusiasm.

Embracing this side of the player’s personality is to Birmingham’s credit because a youngster cannot be so relentlessly driven as to omit fun from his life at that age. No good comes of that. There has to be light and shade.

Alas, as youth team football gave way to first team demands, and the teen began putting in performances that almost immediately sparked transfer speculation from a clutch of leading clubs, the tomfoolery had to recede, replaced by a dedication to improvement that is the mindset of a champion.

“He will never waste a training session, he will never waste a minute in the gym, he will never waste an opportunity to watch his clips back.” That’s Mike Dodds recalling Bellingham at 16, having just started to make his mark in the Championship.

"He's just so laser-focused in every area of his programme. If he feels he's got a deficiency in his game, he'll be almost obsessive with fixing it.”

One Per Cent Club: Finding the Extra Gains

This summer Jude Bellingham heads to the World Cup, with the hopes of a nation on his shoulders. In Madrid meanwhile, he is a hero, an integral component within a trophy-winning machine.

All of this derives from heightened ability, but also too countless hours of dedicated work and sacrifice put in when breaking through.

John Walker is a UEFA A Licence 121 Performance Analyst. He details below what it takes to make it to the very top.

“Diet is so important at that age, because you’re growing. Understanding sleep is also vital. Then there’s oxygen chambers, and ice baths, and recovery days. Besides obvious ability it’s a dedication to doing all of the extra one per cent stuff.

The gold standard is the players who wants one-to-one analysis away from their clubs. Over the summer and at the weekend.

Doing tactical analysis clips once a week isn’t going to make you a world class footballer. But is it going to increase you by one per cent to watch your games back and go through them technically, and really dig into every touch, every moment? Where did we miss a forward pass, and why? Where did we miss a duel, and why? All of the little things can make a big difference.

I guarantee that Jude Bellingham has always taken these things very seriously.”