Tag: Bellingham

Charlton Athletic, Birmingham City pride in Ademola Lookman, Jude Bellingham Ballon d’Or rank

The English Football League has enhanced its reputation as a healthy conveyor belt of talent on the world stage in recent years.

From burgeoning academy hotshots to Premier League loanees, a whole host of esteemed global names have spent shares of their formative years cutting their teeth throughout the EFL pyramid.

In particular, we’ve begun to see an increasing number of players emerge from the ranks of EFL clubs; John Stones started off with Barnsley, Ollie Watkins made a name for himself at Exeter City and then with Brentford, Jarrod Bowen launched his career at Hull City, and it all began for Eberechi Eze at QPR.

All four of those EFL graduates represented England at EURO2024, providing fresh reminders of the talent that exists beneath the Premier League.

At this moment in time, though, Charlton Athletic and Birmingham City will be filled with more pride than most following Monday evening’s prestigious Ballon d’Or ceremony in Paris, as both Ademola Lookman and Jude Bellingham made the final 30-man list.

Charlton Athletic will be proud of Ademola Lookman following Ballon d’Or nomination

It’s somewhat easier to forget than Bellingham’s memorable one-season impact at Birmingham – but Lookman initially started off with Charlton nearly 10 years ago now.

A product of the Addicks’ academy system, Lookman elevated to the first-team frame and enjoyed a breakout season during the 2015/16 campaign by scoring five goals from 24 Championship appearances for Charlton.

They managed to keep him around in League One following relegation, but Lookman ended up leaving for Everton in January. The versatile forward never quite made the grade at Goodison Park and didn’t fare a lot better at Red Bull Leipzig, who loaned him out to both Fulham and Leicester City before cutting their losses by offloading him to Atalanta in the summer of 2022.

Over in Italy, Lookman has gone from strength-to-strength. He made more than 20 goal involvements across all competitions in each of his first two seasons with the club, and marked his crowning moment by scoring a stunning hat-trick in last term’s 3-0 UEFA Europa League victory over Bayer Leverkusen.

The former Charlton flyer has started this season in a rich vein of form, returning four goals and four assists apiece from just six Serie A matches. His talents were recognised in the game’s grandest ceremony, where he finished 14th in the Ballon d’Or rankings – scoring above the likes of Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka, Cole Palmer and Antonio Rudiger.

Charlton, then, have every right to be extremely proud of the success which Lookman has somewhat-unexpectedly enjoyed in his career.

And, as the 27-year-old continues to check off more and more milestones in what’s been a stunning upwards trajectory over the last few years, Charlton will surely be hoping to strike gold with the emergence of another youngster capable of emulating Lookman.

Jude Bellingham’s Ballon d’Or ranking is the latest sign of Birmingham City success

Meanwhile, Blues may not have seen their former prodigy in attendance as Real Madrid boycotted the event after learning that Brazilian forward Vinicus Junior was to lose out on his first Ballon d’Or trophy to Manchester City’s Rodri, but they’ll nonetheless be glowing with pride.

Bellingham, who enjoyed a stunning year at club level with Los Blancos, finished third in the final rankings and had actually been predicted to win the Ballon d’Or by many. His time will come, though. Make no mistake about it.

For the meantime, his status as one of the very best players in world football at 21-years-old has been underlined even further. Birmingham will be extremely proud to see an academy graduate enjoying such storied success at the highest echelons of the game, and they also deserve credit for kick-starting his career.

Jude Bellingham’s career stats across all competitions, as per FotMob
Season	Division	Club	Appearances	Goals	Assists
2019/20	Championship	Birmingham City	44	4	2
2020/21	Bundesliga	Borussia Dortmund	46	4	4
2021/22	Bundesliga	Borussia Dortmund	44	6	13
2022/23	Bundesliga	Borussia Dortmund	42	14	6
2023/24	LaLiga	Real Madrid	42	23	13
2024/25 [as of November 1]	LaLiga	Real Madrid	11	0	3

That’s because many clubs beneath the Category One academy threshold, and particularly those within the EFL, are often susceptible to losing their finest prospects before their graduation to first-team level, but Birmingham were able to retain Bellingham and ended up getting one memorable campaign out of him.

Bellingham, of course, made the step-up to the club’s first-team fold at the tender age of 16 and became the youngest player in Blues history when he debuted against Portsmouth in the EFL Cup aged just 16 years and 38 days before going on to make 44 appearances across all competitions during the 2019/20 campaign.

Jude Bellingham playing for Birmingham City

The midfielder played with both confidence and composure far beyond his youthful years and was duly crowned as the EFL’s Young Player of the Season.

Bellingham, who famously saw his shirt number retired by Birmingham, soon became the most expensive 17-year-old of all time by earning a £25 million move to Borussia Dortmund that summer after reportedly snubbing advances from Manchester United.

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The rest is history as far as Bellingham’s career is concerned, with the five-star midfielder going on to play a leading role on all fronts for both club and country. It all started at Birmingham, though, and they’ll doubtless accompany Charlton in taking away real pride from Monday.

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November 1, 2024

Football documentaries: players own narrative but what do we actually learn? | Jude Bellingham

Jude Bellingham is perhaps the most well-documented footballer in history. Well, at his age at least. Sky Sports, Deutsche Welle, Copa90, Borussia Dortmund and Birmingham City all produced documentaries about him before his 21st birthday. And it’s clear to see why. His transformation from Birmingham City’s youngest ever player to a world beating galáctico in the space of five years is remarkable.

His performances on the pitch last season, picking up the award for La Liga Player of the Season, winning the Champions League and scoring a perfectly timed bicycle kick at Euro 2024, prompted fans and journalists alike to ask “who writes your scripts?”. As it turns out, Bellingham Media Ltd does.

The company has produced the latest addition to Jude lore with Out of the Floodlights, a four-part docuseries that follows the midfielder’s journey from his last game at Borussia Dortmund to the final of Euro 2024 with England.

The series is well shot, produced and edited, blending traditional talking head setups with more casual, fly-on-the-wall moments. It juggles the idea that Bellingham is a superstar but also a regular person like you and me as we follow him to award shows, photoshoots and his home. With its emotional ebbs and flows, the documentary is by far the best offering in the catalogue of films about him.

But more than anything, the series is an example of how footballers are taking control of their own narrative and understanding their value. Jude Bellingham’s documentary is almost all from his perspective, as well as some moments when you hear from his loved ones. He has created a safe space in which he can speak to his fans and critics, often looking down the barrel of the lens in his interviews, as if talking directly to them.

The new documentary follows Jude Bellingham during his first season at Real Madrid. Photograph: Pedro Castillo/Real Madrid/Getty Images

Of course, the path Bellingham is walking has been trodden before. David Beckham, to whom Bellingham is sometimes compared, recently won an Emmy for his Beckham documentary.

In it, Beckham speaks about some of the most controversial moments in his career, sometimes for the first time publicly. While documentaries in which the superstar protagonist plays such a dominant role – as also seen in Michael Jordan’s The Last Dance – are never going to be the most critical, they offer an opportunity for a celebrity to finally speak about how they have been reported.

The difference with the current crop of sportspeople is that they’re choosing to shape narratives more quickly and on their own platforms.

Cristiano Ronaldo turned to Piers Morgan to conduct the controversial interview that ultimately led to the forward’s transfer away from Manchester United to Al Nassr. This year however, fresh off the back of creating his own YouTube channel, he tapped his old mate Rio Ferdinand to interview him about a range of topics, including his thoughts on the current Manchester United team.

David Beckham talks about his life and career in Beckham, winning an Emmy in the process. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

UR Cristiano, whose subscriber base is almost equivalent to the total population of Britain, has realised the value of creating narratives on his own platform. Erik ten Hag himself was then asked about the interview which had taken place thousands of miles away in the comfort of Ronaldo’s memorabilia room. What’s more, the revenue generated , goes to him and his team – not that he particularly needs it.

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Other footballers are also using their platforms to express themselves. Rafael Leão, sometimes criticised on social media for focusing too much on fashion and music rather than his football, uses his YouTube channel to vlog. In one video, we see the Milan forward travel to London to promote his own clothing brand Son Is Son, meet fashion designer Clint Ogbenna and lay down a verse in a recording studio.

His videos simultaneously confirm and confound the narratives surrounding him. Yes, he’s interested in other things outside of football but hisnperformances on the pitch speak for themselves. He shows that like us (we hope), he’s not defined by his day job, and the lo-fi nature of the vlogs help audiences connect with him more than an overproduced film ever could.

AC Milan forward Rafael Leão is another footballer using YouTube to shine a light on his interests outside of the game. Photograph: Daniele Mascolo/Reuters

Social media encourages us to form parasocial relationships with footballers. It’s easier than ever to feel as if you know them because you get a glimpse into their lives. But there will always remain a barrier that will prevent you from really learning too much about your favourite player.

There’s too much at stake for anyone still working. They’ve got to satisfy their employer, their sponsors and themselves. The result is a curated product that lacks the critique of an article or the depth of a retrospective film on somebody’s life.

But that’s not the point. This content is made for us to buy into the brands of Jude Bellingham, Cristiano Ronaldo and Rafael Leão. To see them as individuals outside of their sport and ultimately invest more time and money into them.

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October 13, 2024