Zero goals and two assists: Bellingham’s difficult fit after the arrival of Mbappé

«He is contributing a lot, not with the goals, obviously, but with his work, which is very important for us. “He knows very well the relevance he has in our team,” explains Ancelotti, completely removed from the nostalgia of Bellingham from last season. Carlo understands that Jude’s goals were more necessary than ever after the departure of Benzema and the club’s decision not to sign Harry Kane or any top striker to replace the Frenchman. The project was to hold out until this course, in which I was already going to be Mbappé, and believe in the scoring ability, not only of the Englishman, but of Brahim, Joselu, substitutes in whom he had placed a lot of trust, and rightly so, as was later demonstrated.

Point of the rhombus

So Ancelotti, as the non-negotiable club man that he has always been throughout his career, placed Jude up top along with Rodrygo and Vinicius, at the tip of a diamond in which Kroos acted as anchor and Camavinga and Valverde as interiors, and gave him to the Englishman absolute freedom to reach the area and contribute the maximum number of goals to the team. What no one expected, neither the footballer himself nor Ancelotti himself, is that everything would turn out so well. Thanks to Bellingham the Madrid He went to the Christmas holidays with half the League won, a cushion that allowed him to face the second half of the championship with greater peace of mind, and with the advantage of dosing efforts and energy also thinking about the Champions League matches. The result is well known: double.

«Last year it was decisive that he scored goals because we did not have a striker, we had lost someone as important as Benzema. This year we don’t have that problem because it has come Mbappewho can score 30, 35 or 40 goals. Obviously, it will always be good for Jude to score, but now we need him more for his work,” analyzes Ancelotti. That job consists, among other functions, of running everything that Mbappé and Vinicius don’t run when it’s time to run backwards. So the order of preferences for Carlo is undisputed: goals by the French and Brazilian, collective work by the Englishman.

Jude is the first to understand that the arrival of Mbappé conditions this season’s system. Although it’s really not just Mbappé. Ancelotti has not given up playing without Rodrygoand that forces him to have three up, which delays Bellingham’s position twenty meters. Furthermore, after Carvajal’s serious injury, Jude has been thrown to the right in the last two games, increasing the Englishman’s defensive demands, with the idea of ​​helping Lucas in those tasks. Bellingham obeys and, in Ancelotti’s eyes, fulfills his new role perfectly, but what is going through the Englishman’s head is another matter.

His gestural language shows a certain anxiety to score his first goal of the season. Not only does he get angry with himself, as happened after forgiving a header in a small area against the Borussia right after 0-2, or after the double stick a minute after that clear chance. He has also been seen angry with some of his teammates for not giving him the ball in a clear scoring position. That’s how it was with Vinicius in Vigo, when the Brazilian sucked a ball that had a simple pass to Jude and a shot on goal without opposition from the Englishman. It is the difficult fit of Bellingham in this Madrid of Mbappé.