Jude Bellingham still deserves the Ballon d’Or! Forget Euro 2024 disappointment – Real Madrid star boy remains the best choice for Golden Ball

After 16 years of scarcely broken dominance, barring a major miracle, neither Cristiano Ronaldo nor Lionel Messi will ever win the Ballon d’Or ever again. Last year represented a misty-eyed victory lap for this era, with Messi’s 2022 World Cup triumph earning him a final taste of world football’s greatest individual prize.

In 2024, we will enter a brave new world, with a small group of frontrunners in line to win their first-ever Ballon d’Or. Vinicius Jr, Real Madrid’s Champions League final hero, is the favourite heading into Monday’s ceremony in Paris – especially if you ask Rio Ferdinand. However, unlike in previous years, his ascension is far from a foregone conclusion.

Had he replicated his big-game performances for Brazil at Copa America, and Spain hadn’t won Euro 2024, he might have had a clean run at the Golden Ball. But these events have strengthened calls for Rodri, Lamine Yamal or even Dani Carvajal to get the nod this year.

Then there’s the looming presence of Jude Bellingham. For months, he seemed perfectly placed to become the first English Ballon d’Or winner since apple-core throwing enthusiast Michael Owen back in 2001. But his own chances were dented by a less than explosive end to the season and an ultimately disappointing European Championship.

Recency bias be damned, though. To entirely dismiss Bellingham as a possible Ballon d’Or winner would be to completely ignore him taking the world by storm before Christmas. As such, he must be considered a contender ahead of the trophy being handed out.

• Getty

  Extraordinary pressure

  It’s hard to imagine the sort of pressure Bellingham was under heading into the 2023-24 season. Aged 20, just a few years on from turning out in the Championship for hometown side Birmingham City, the midfielder had been bought for close to £100 million ($131m) by the biggest footballing institution on the planet.

  Indeed, during his first press conference as a Real Madrid player, he confessed that his “heart was close to stopping” when he first heard about the possibility of making a move to Santiago Bernabeu. He did little to temper expectations for himself either, taking Zinedine Zidane’s old No.5 shirt and immediately vowing to help bring home trophies, following Los Blancos falling short in La Liga and the Champions League the prior campaign.

  “A club like Madrid and its fans and the people who work for the club deserve to have trophies every year. That is the standard I want to help the club reach, where they can compete for these honours very closely every year,” he said.

  • AFP

    Hype train leaves the station

    This context is important, as it makes what came next seem otherworldly in its brilliance. Despite all of the noise surrounding his arrival, Bellingham immediately began dominating La Liga. A goal just 36 minutes into his league debut, a 2-0 victory over Athletic Club, set the tone for a surreal first month.

    During those opening weeks it seemed as if Bellingham would simply never stop scoring. Playing just behind unconventional ‘strikers’ Rodrygo and Vinicius, he followed up his debut goal with a brace against Almeria and crucial winners in narrow victories over Celta Vigo and Getafe.

    By this point, Bellingham-mania was running wild in the Spanish capital. Shirts carrying his name and iconic No.5 were spreading like a virus around Madrid and beyond, and his unabashed confidence was a throwback to the Galactico era.

    “I think I’m 10-times better as a player than last season,” he said in August 2023. “I’m learning from these players. The level here is so high, I’m like a sponge taking it all in.”

    It’s hard to overstate how impressive this start to life at Madrid was. Many marquee signings – Eden Hazard, Luka Jovic, even Kaka – have wilted under the Bernabeu lights over the years. Not Bellingham, though. Within just a few weeks he had established himself as Ancelotti’s most important attacking contributor, helping fill the gaping hole left by Karim Benzema’s departure that same summer. Not bad for a central midfielder.
  • Getty Images Sport

    Among the best in the world

    If Bellingham had continued scoring at the same rate as he had in his first four games, he would have finished the campaign with 53 goals from 42 appearances. As one might expect, he didn’t quite manage to reach those dizzying heights, but his output was still world-class as he helped Madrid win La Liga and the Champions League.

    In the end, he contributed 27 goals for club and country. Subtract penalties and he managed only two fewer league goals than Erling Haaland, while comfortably hitting the back of the net more frequently than Madrid team-mate and principal Ballon d’Or rival Vinicius.

    Bellingham also chipped in with 17 assists. This included setting up Harry Kane and Marcus Rashford during England’s impressive 3-1 victory over Italy at Wembley, while he laid on Vinicius’ winner in the Champions League final at the same venue.

    Clearly, these goal and assist tallies are not comparable to prime Messi and Ronaldo levels. But if out-of-context statistics are your thing, Bellingham has the strongest argument of any of the players who have been mentioned as realistic contenders for this year’s Ballon d’Or.

  • Getty Images Sport

    Coming in clutch

    It wasn’t just this reliability in the final third that made Bellingham’s 2023-24 season so special, though. Over the course of the campaign, he also strengthened his reputation as one of the most clutch performers around. Time and time again, when club and country were moments from disaster he would single-handedly drag them back from the abyss.

    This began back in September. With Madrid drawing 1-1 against local rivals Getafe, Lucas Vazquez fired off a Hail-Mary shot from outside the box in the 96th minute. And while team-mates and opponents alike watched on, Bellingham was alive, following in the effort and tapping home a dramatic winner when goalkeeper David Soria spilled the initial effort. It was a fine example of the midfielder understanding exactly what it meant to play for Los Blancos – the team that is never dead.

    “I saw [Real Madrid comebacks] a lot of times on TV when I was a kid,” Bellingham said after the game. “I remember thinking ‘they won’t be able to do it’ and in the end they did. Now I’m here and I’m seeing it. I never thought we were going to lose, I looked at the players’ faces and there was no panic.”

    Just a few weeks later, Bellingham further lived up to Madrid’s unbeatable mystique. This time, Union Berlin were their unfortunate victims. Playing in their first-ever Champions League group game, the German minnows were tantalisingly close to securing one of their most significant results ever.

    Bellingham, though, had other ideas. Again, he showed his poacher’s instincts, popping up in the fourth minute of second-half stoppage-time to score another close-range dagger. It was more of the same for England in March when Bellingham was the Three Lions’ saviour in a friendly meeting with Belgium, netting a 94th-minute leveller – but that was nothing compared to his contribution in the Euro 2024 round of 16.

    With a thoroughly underwhelming England literally seconds from a humiliating exit at the hands of Slovakia, something astounding happened. A Kyle Walker long throw was guided into Bellingham general’s orbit by Marc Guehi. A split second and lightning overhead kick later, Bellingham was wheeling away. “Who else?!” he asked the world. Who else, indeed?

  • Getty Images Sport

    King of El Clasico

    A Ballon d’Or winning year needs even more iconic moments than this, though, particularly if the player has the summer’s major international trophy missing from their cabinet. Fortunately for Bellingham’s Golden Ball case, he also made sure to step up in the most storied club game in all of football.

    His Clasico debut came in October 2023 when the two age-old rivals were separated by just one point at the top of the table. Barcelona, the hosts that day, took an early lead and then frustrated Madrid. Bellingham was the catalyst in the turnaround, silencing the Olympic Stadium with a stupidly good goal. Picking up a botched clearance 30 yards from goal, his strike was so clean the ball did not deviate a millimetre from its intended path, bulldozing through Marc-Andre ter Stegen impotent, outstretched palm.

    Then, with just over one minute of additional time elapsed in the second half, he made sure the game was forever remembered as the ‘Bellingham Clasico’. Devoid of all emotion, he coldly kept his eye fixed on the ball as Carvajal’s deflected cross edged closer to him. Without a hint of panic, he slipped it past Ter Stegen and trotted off to perform his now familiar outstretched-arms celebration. Bellingham had just won El Clasico on his own.

    The return fixture in April was an altogether more quiet affair on a personal level. That was until Bellingham’s familiar, stoppage-time power-up kicked in, of course. This time there was 91 minutes on the clock when he saved Madrid. Arriving just when he meant to at the back post, he thumped a left-footed strike into the roof of the net, all but confirming that the league title would be returning to the Bernabeu.

  • Getty Images Sport

    No player is perfect anymore

    For all of his brilliance, it would be misguided to claim that Bellingham’s 2023-24 was without fault. A healthy arrogance is to be expected from a man who has achieved all that he has at just 21. But there have been times when his inflated self-belief has come at a detriment to his team as a whole.

    Those not convinced that Bellingham should be handed the Ballon d’Or on Monday will point at his Euro 2024 performances as evidence of his shortcomings. Despite scoring the winner in England’s group-stage opener and keeping them alive with that overhead, it’s difficult to frame the tournament as anything other than a disappointment. He failed to mesh with Phil Foden and Harry Kane, often held onto the ball for too long and there were even reports that he wasn’t universally popular with his team-mates due to his unwillingness to front up after poor displays in the media.

    A couple of niggling injuries, general fatigue and the form of Vinicius also relegated him to a supporting character in the second half of Madrid’s campaign; he failed to score or assist across either leg in the Champions League quarter-finals and semi-finals.

    But no one is perfect. Vinicius missed a sizeable chunk of the season through injury; Rodri failed to win the Champions League and will always be remembered after Yamal and Nico Williams when it comes to Spain’s European Championship triumph.

    The truth is, none of the Ballon d’Or contenders are faultless. And what makes Bellingham such an alluring choice is not just his on-field moments, but also how he managed to transcend football in his first season in Madrid. Fellow sports stars and pop-culture figures alike embraced his signature celebration, while the hype created by his logic-defying, dramatic winners meant he went into a major tournament carrying a football-crazed nation’s hopes on his shoulders at a freakishly young age.

    The fact it didn’t go entirely to plan after that shouldn’t entirely discredit his chance of recognition in Paris. Forget about Germany; why shouldn’t Stourbridge’s boy wonder go home with the Ballon d’Or?