Jude Bellingham Reflects on Euro 2024 Disconnect and New England Dynamics
Jude Bellingham does not dress it up. England reached the Euro 2024 final, came within one game of ending decades of frustration, yet inside the camp something felt broken.
Two years on, speaking from England’s World Cup base in the United States, the midfielder has lifted the lid on a campaign that never quite matched the hype.
“At the Euros I think we got a few things wrong off the pitch, I don’t feel the group connected as well as it could have for a number of reasons,” he admitted, reflecting on a summer that ended in defeat to Spain. England were billed as one of the favourites. They rarely played like it.
“We weren’t playing well, which doesn’t help, so even when we were winning, we didn’t get the feeling that we were as happy as we should be.”
That disconnect showed. Gareth Southgate’s side lurched through the knockout stages in Germany, surviving more than progressing. They needed Bellingham’s acrobatic, last-gasp overhead kick just to drag Slovakia to extra time in the last 16. They edged past Switzerland on penalties in the quarter-finals. They then relied on another late goal to squeeze by the Netherlands in the semi-finals.
From the outside, Bellingham’s overhead in Gelsenkirchen instantly joined the canon of great England tournament moments. For the player himself, the memory is more complicated.
“I still remember how I was feeling at the time. It always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable because it was such a bad situation,” the Real Madrid man said. “We weren't playing well. I remember as a kid watching World Cups and Euros where we crashed out against teams we shouldn’t have gone out to and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I’m about to be a part of one of those moments’. It shakes up the whole of English football.”
The goal spared England from that fate, but it did not erase the unease. The football stuttered. The mood never quite lifted. A squad stacked with talent felt strangely joyless.
That is the landscape Thomas Tuchel has walked into. The new England manager has made a point of talking about “brotherhood”, of building a tighter, more connected group as he chases the biggest prize of all at this summer’s World Cup.
The contrast with Bellingham’s description of Euro 2024 is stark. Tuchel wants a collective that breathes together. Bellingham’s recollection is of a camp that never fully did.
Now the 21-year-old finds himself at the heart of a very different kind of battle: a straight fight for the No 10 role.
Bellingham is locked in what looks like a clear shootout with Morgan Rogers for a starting place in England’s World Cup opener against Croatia on Wednesday. Tuchel has been open about it. One shirt. Two men.
It is a ruthless scenario on paper. In reality, it is layered with history. The pair grew up in the same patch of the West Midlands, played junior football together, and have remained close.
“As a person, he is a top guy, he can get along with anyone, can have conversations with anyone,” Bellingham said of Rogers. “He can be a bit loud. We have debates that turn into arguments a lot. But we get on like brothers, to be fair.”
The rivalry is real. The resentment is not.
“The manager has made it very clear in a lot of the times where he has spoken that we are playing for the same position,” Bellingham explained. “I know that has eased up a bit more now that he sees me playing more positions and Morgs playing more positions, but I honestly have no ill feelings when he is playing and I’m not playing.”
If Tuchel wanted a test case for his brotherhood mantra, he has it in front of him: two childhood friends, one role, one global stage.
Bellingham has already delivered a powerful reminder of what he can do in that space, producing a commanding display in England’s final warm-up win against Costa Rica. He looked sharp, inventive, authoritative – the kind of performance that usually nails down a starting place.
Yet this England is under new management, with new rules and a new emotional temperature. Past glories do not guarantee present status. Not when the manager is demanding connection as well as quality.
Bellingham knows what it feels like to be at the centre of a team that wins but does not quite feel right. The question now is whether he will lead a very different England out against Croatia – and whether this time, the mood off the pitch finally matches the ambition on it.
