Last Wednesday, Jude Bellingham was named England’s Player of the Year for 2024-25. Less than 48 hours later, he was released.
England manager Thomas Tuchel explained the decision by highlighting the player’s lack of playing time at Real Madrid after undergoing shoulder surgery in the summer – Bellingham, 22, has started just one game in four appearances this season and has yet to complete 90 minutes – but scratch the surface of that explanation and a more complicated picture emerges.
Tuchel has repeatedly highlighted the lack of time he has to work with his squad ahead of next year’s FIFA World Cup finals, reinforcing the need to bring key players together as often as possible. He also described the September camp as the best of his tenure, believing Serbia’s 5-0 defeat in the World Cup qualifier in Belgrade was the product of nine positive and focused days together.
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Tuchel opted to retain almost every player from that group when October’s squad was announced, replacing the injured Noni Madueke with Arsenal teammate Bukayo Saka and including Jarell Quansah and Ruben Loftus-Cheek from the start after drafting them last month following withdrawals. Saka, incidentally, hasn’t played 90 minutes for Arsenal since the opening weekend of the season.
“Team spirit is ultimately the key factor,” Tuchel said last week. “We want to go to the tournament, we have to qualify first.
“We want to develop something special and I truly believe that the fans can feel that there is a team that likes to play for each other, that likes to run for each other, that is there to give everything.
“That was clearly seen in the match against Serbia, so now it’s up to us to follow through on that and for that we took no risks. We made a very simple decision to go with the same group of players.”
But that ‘simple’ decision involved officially excluding last year’s best English player, which begged the question: is there anything more that can be done?
Experiment with alternatives
Tuchel was asked directly if England could win the World Cup without Bellingham. He chose to rephrase the argument.
“Do I think we’re a stronger team with Jude? Yes,” he replied. “Is he one of the best midfield players in the world? Yes. But I told you last time when he got injured: what will we do if a player like Jude gets injured before the World Cup? Should we cancel then? Do we not travel?
“It’s a team sport. Everyone has a particular role and it can happen just before the tournament and then we have to find solutions. It will never be the solution to depend on one player in football.”
Bellingham is an incredibly gifted footballer, and it seems inconceivable that he won’t be in England’s starting line-up at the World Cup. Interestingly, England have won 26 of 42 matches with Bellingham in the team, but without him that record improves to 13 wins, 6 draws and just one defeat.
In Bellingham’s favor is his unrivaled ability within the England team to bend a match to his will. There are arguably only a handful of players in the world who possess this combination of skills to win games. He must, however, maintain a certain level of performance, and it is clear that Tuchel is ready to calibrate his thinking by giving at least the same weight to what the players deliver in the England jersey as to what they do for their clubs. Taking Tuchel’s argument at face value, he is of course right to say that England need to identify alternatives should Bellingham suffer an injury.
Tuchel has so far favored a 4-2-3-1 system, and Morgan Rogers was excellent against Serbia as England’s number 10. Rogers’ intelligence with the ball and industry without it makes him a strong candidate, and he is likely to continue when Wales travel to Wembley on Thursday for a friendly. Morgan Gibbs-White is a possible alternative, as is Loftus-Cheek perhaps, but it is surprising, given Tuchel’s reasoning for Bellingham’s omission, that Phil Foden has also been left out. Foden was often pushed onto the wing under former manager Gareth Southgate to accommodate Bellingham, but only last month his boss at Manchester City, Pep Guardiola, reiterated the widely held view that the 25-year-old is at his best when playing centrally.
Choosing not to use Foden is even stranger when you consider another obvious choice, Cole Palmer, unavailable due to injury. The Chelsea playmaker is out with a groin problem and his rapid rise at Stamford Bridge has only furthered his case for a starting place next summer, having come off the bench to score in the Euro 2024 final defeat to Spain last summer, Southgate’s final game in charge.
Sources told ESPN that Tuchel had also considered using Bellingham alongside Harry Kane as a 4-4-2 split striker, aware of England’s lack of elite quality in sixth place. Elliot Anderson’s impressive performances against Andorra and Serbia encouraged Tuchel to address this issue, freeing the manager to play Declan Rice alongside Anderson and then pick four attacking options in front of him in a 4-2-3-1 system.
Team dynamics
This is where things get complicated, as the claim that last month’s camp was the best under Tuchel in terms of camaraderie implicitly casts some doubt on those who were absent.
“I think last camp was the best I’ve been a part of, to be honest,” winger Anthony Gordon told ESPN. “In terms of the camp vibe, everyone seemed really happy, really content. On the pitch we probably had our best performance and it seemed like everything clicked on and off the pitch.
“So it doesn’t surprise me that the same team was called up, but we can’t rest on our laurels and think that everything will be fine from now on. We still need to improve our level.”
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Tuchel explains Bellingham’s England squad omission
Thomas Tuchel explains why Jude Bellingham is not in his latest England squad.
Quansah has only been called up for six camps in total – and is yet to make his full England debut – but the former Liverpool defender has agreed. “With all the teams here, we always have good team chemistry,” the Bayer Leverkusen defender told ESPN. “When you perform well, it breeds good positivity about the camp.
“September camp can be tough, with the season starting, but the way we performed…everyone saw how good it was. And that creates positivity and strong team chemistry.”
There are no publicly documented instances of Bellingham’s involvement in issues within the camp. Tuchel clearly insisted there were “no problems” between him and Bellingham, Foden or Jack Grealish, for that matter, after the trio were left out of his last team. However, sources have told ESPN that some relationships within the group were strained during the run to the Euro 2024 final last summer. Bellingham was seen shouting angrily towards Southgate as the game threatened to get away from them.
Southgate admitted after the final that he would have pulled Bellingham out for extra time if the team had not fallen behind with Mikel Oyarzabal’s 86th-minute goal.
Most pertinently, Tuchel publicly criticized elements of Bellingham’s behavior in a radio interview in June when he said: “If he smiles, he wins everyone over. But sometimes you see the rage and the fire, and it comes out in a way that can be a little bit disgusting.”
Tuchel later apologized – with the valid mitigation that he was speaking in a second language – but the German effectively chose to double down on the Bellingham issue by leaving him out this month.
As former England international Gary Neville, who went on to be part of the national team coaching staff under Roy Hodgson, said: “It’s definitely sending him a message. If you think about England managers over the last 20, 30 years, they always bring back their star players, even if they haven’t played a game just to get them back in there.
“So that’s a message for Jude Bellingham. I don’t think he’ll take it any other way. Those are enough signals that we’ve seen in Thomas Tuchel’s press conferences to know that he’s not afraid to make a tough decision. There are obviously things he doesn’t like – not just about Jude Bellingham but about other players as well, and he thinks, ‘I’m going to send them a message.'”
So it’s up to Bellingham to respond during his time at Real Madrid.
Bellingham’s appearance as a substitute in Saturday’s 3-1 win over Villarreal before the international break was a mixed bag. The idea that there will be a mini-pre-season during this fortnight could be just what he needs to get back to his best form for a big month at Real, including a UEFA Champions League clash with Juventus before the first game of the season. Classic against Barcelona on October 26 (stream LIVE at 1:15 p.m. ET on ESPN+ in the United States). Bellingham’s Madrid teammate Kylian Mbappé will join France for the international break despite spraining his ankle shortly after scoring his team’s third goal against Villarreal.
Gordon said: “You really notice when he [Bellingham] isn’t there because he’s a big presence and he’s such a great player, but I think he’s been injured, he’s had a tough few months. It probably did him some good, to be honest. He played so much football for his age. It’s crazy. He’s younger than me, it’s crazy. He’s played so much football and he’s only just getting his shoulder done, which gives him time to get into the rhythm and start playing again.
“I think we all know that if he plays week in, week out for Real Madrid,” Gordon said, “he will be in the England team.”
