Jude Bellingham has been the most popular up-and-coming young midfielder in world football over the past couple of seasons, reaching star status almost immediately after signing with Borussia Dortmund.
In the 2022/23 season, Bellingham took a huge step forward in his career as the clear leader and star player for BVB after Erling Haaland’s departure to Manchester City.
And at 19 years old with his all-around skill set, Bellingham is, in many ways, a more valuable commodity than Haaland
Hence why he is reportedly on his way to Real Madrid for a transfer fee exceeding 100 million euros.
Let’s take a closer look at Jude Bellingham, analyzing his playing style, strengths, and weaknesses before evaluating his overall quality as a player.
Playing Style
Jude Bellingham is the prototypical box-to-box midfielder. He will fight to win possession for his team, moving around the pitch based on the flow of the game.
So if Dortmund need to sit back against a Champions League opponent like Chelsea, Bellingham will cover for the rest of his teammates and seek to win the ball in these positions without risking the structure.
But for the most part, Dortmund play on the front foot. That is their style and a key part of their identity in the Bundesliga, which does mean taking risks in matches against Bayern München, for example.
In these games, Dortmund allow themselves to play open, gambling up the pitch to win the ball. Bellingham will press high, but he will also do a lot of running back and forth in these free-flowing matches.
Offensively, Bellingham is a monster in transitions, taking defenders on and eating up blades of grass to progress possession for his team.
Bellingham is averaging a whopping 3.24 progressive carries and 2.88 successful take-ons per 90 this season, and he has been the most-fouled player in the German Bundesliga.
Those are elite numbers. But even though Bellingham is an “8” who is at his best as a wide midfielder on either side of a 4-3-3, he can play as the more active member of a double-pivot. He has fulfilled a variety of roles for Dortmund over the past couple of seasons.
He is a great attacking midfielder with his quality end product, vision, and dribbling skills in tight spaces. Bellingham can even play on the wings due to his athletic traits, teasing the strikers with low crosses.
Strengths
There are a lot of things that we can consider “strengths” in Jude Bellingham’s game. He is one of the best-conditioned athletes in midfield in the Bundesliga, which is the most intensive league in European football when it comes to the sprinting required.
Bellingham has the skill on the ball to beat defenders, using his agility and cleverness to move up the pitch in an efficient manner with minimal touches.
Once he gets into the final third, Bellingham has the quality and creativity to find the pass needed to create a goal. That aspect of his game has been severely underrated these past couple of seasons, especially in 2022/23 when he’s taken on a less creative role in order to help accommodate Julian Brandt’s emergence for Dortmund.
Even so, Bellingham is averaging a career-high 4.18 shot-creating actions per 90, which is world-class for a box-to-box midfielder.
Bellingham’s overall technical quality is as good as any midfielder in the Bundesliga, with perhaps only the Bayern München duo of Jamal Musiala and Joshua Kimmich surpassing him.
The 19-year-old England international has eight goals and four assists this season, including some difficult finishes that would be expected from a forward.
For as good as Bellingham is on the ball, his defensive work has actually been even more impressive this season – and even more important for Dortmund.
This BVB side doesn’t have a true star in midfield besides Bellingham, and their playing style means that they need their midfield to do a lot of running and ball-winning to relieve pressure off the back line.
Bellingham is averaging 3.71 combined tackles and interceptions per 90 this season, winning two-thirds of his one-on-one challenges.
That shows you his defensive work rate and quality in the tackle, with the latter being especially important for a club like Real Madrid.
As far as intangibles go, Bellingham has exceeded expectations regardless of how much pressure or responsibility is placed on his shoulders.
He can be a magnet for criticism from the media, fanbase, and even referees, and his demanding nature can sometimes rub teammates the wrong way.
But Bellingham is a leader at such a young age. He has elevated Dortmund’s mentality, never settling for less from his teammates on a team that, let’s face it, has underperformed for far too long.
Bellingham’s attitude would be even more welcomed at Real Madrid, which prides itself on its demanding standards and winning heritage.
Weaknesses
Because he’s such a special young talent, Jude Bellingham does not have many weaknesses, and his main weaknesses are either brought out by circumstance or the fact that he is still a U21 player.
Bellingham has to perform so many tasks for Dortmund and is so important to the team defensively, offensively, and in progression that he can sometimes hurt BVB by doing too much.
That should be less of a problem at Real Madrid, but there are times when Bellingham should release the ball sooner or slow down. He’s actually improved this significantly in the second half of the season for Dortmund, improving at patiently recycling the ball and picking out his moments.
There was a brief period of time in which Bellingham’s performances slipped a bit from “great” to ” decent”, which did hurt Dortmund.
Sometimes, he can get sloppy with his passing when things aren’t going his team’s way, and, like many young players, he is prone to getting too involved in the shenanigans of the other team.
As a passer, Bellingham could get better at finding creative solutions and increasing the range of chance-creating balls produced by his weak foot. But these are more advanced skills.
So…how good is he?
Already, Jude Bellingham is one of the best midfielders in the world, and there is a case to be made that only Kevin De Bruyne, Toni Kroos, and Joshua Kimmich are better than he is right now.
There isn’t a better young player to buy on the transfer market than Bellingham, so you can see why Real Madrid are so keen on signing him for over 100 million euros despite having already invested that much in Aurélien Tchouaméni in the past two transfer windows.
It’s scary to think about the levels Bellingham can achieve in the next three to five years. He was already a good player in his first season at Dortmund, but he jumped into being a world-class player – without any shadow of a doubt – in his second season.
Bellingham has been, if anything, underhyped because of how few people actually watch Dortmund every week in the Bundesliga.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.