Jude Bellingham is turning out to be Real Madrid’s most value-for-money signing in years. The Englishman is performing at an incredibly high level and surpassing all expectations. With 10 goals in as many games for Los Blancos, he’s proving the Karim Benzema replacement that they never thought they’d inherit so easily.
With his incredible start to his career at the Santiago Bernabeu, Bellingham has the footballing world talking about him. The Englishman is making everyone go gaga, with his trademark celebration becoming iconic and the Santiago Bernabeu faithful singing ‘Hey Jude’ in his tribute.
He’s also being an inevitable thorn in the side of Barcelona with his goals. By helping his side win matches time and again, Bellingham is pulling the La Liga title race away from the defending champions.
Real Madrid fans are definitely having the most fun in the world with Bellingham. They love boasting about how he’s way better than any midfielder Barca have. This includes praising his ability to score goals more frequently than Gavi or Pedri.
Amid all the drama, some Barcelona fans appear to have found material to mock the Madridistas. This is in the form of a really old picture of Bellingham wearing their jersey. Now, it’s almost an unspoken sin for a Real Madrid player or member to wear anything related to Barca.
In fact, a Real Madrid youth coach was recently reportedly fired for the pettiest reason. That is because he had written a special ‘thank you note’ to Barcelona after leaving them for Los Blancos. That is exactly how deep this rivalry and loathing still exists between the two Spanish giants.
Some Barca fans appear to have unearthed this really old picture of Bellingham in a Barca jersey to embarrass the Los Blancos faithful. However, this was immediately disputed because anything is easily editable on social media these days. Real Madrid fans started to counter this with a clearly fabricated picture of Pedri wearing one of their old kits.
Image: A young Pedri wearing a Madrid shirt. pic.twitter.com/ejNoR2L298
— edwin (@nxtepe) October 6, 2023
Even the Twitter community notes manager seems to be determined to put this down. The community notes on the tweets with Bellingham wearing a Barca kit warned that ‘there is no shred of evidence’ that he is the one in this picture. They even stated that this picture was a ‘random black boy’ wearing the jersey instead.
However, on this occasion, it even appears that the community notes manager is wrong. Barca fans were just so adamant about proving that this image is real that they went digging into history. And voila! They actually managed to prove that this indeed is a picture of Bellingham in a Barca kit.
Apparently, this picture is a shot from a documentary produced by Birmingham City – Jude’s childhood club. The documentary ‘The Rise of Jude Bellingham’ which was released in 2021, features a shot (around 2:45′ mark) that shows the Englishman wearing a Barca jersey with Lionel Messi’s initials printed on the back.
This comes after a tweet also became viral in the summer showing of Bellingham’s ‘dream book’ during his school years. In the page of his ultimate dream, the Englishman reportedly stated wanted to be a pro footballer for Barcelona and England.
Despite all this, one thing that is known is that Jude wasn’t a Barca or Real Madrid fan when he was a child. He’s Birmingham City through and through, having supported them growing up and even playing for them before his rise to fame.
He is, of course, a Leo Messi fanboy and has no issues speaking about it either. In a past interview, he was asked to choose between Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi and had said: “Messi for me, for sure. You can just watch him and think like ‘How does he do that?’ Every time I watch him, he just does something that I just think ‘You can’t be human’.”
Bellingham, now 20, grew up at a time when Messi dominated world football and made many aspiring footballers his fanatics with his incredible support. So it’s safe to assume that he wore this Barca kit for his love for Messi, and not for the club specifically.
With that all being said, Bellingham is definitely Madrdista true and true since his move to the Santiago Bernabeu – something he aims to prove when he aims to destroy Barcelona in the upcoming El Clasico after the October international break.