{"id":25454,"date":"2026-09-01T07:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T07:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=25454"},"modified":"2026-09-01T07:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T07:21:10","slug":"ballon-dor-bellingham-is-officially-back-england-icon-jude-picking-up-where-he-left-off-at-world-cup-with-real-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=25454","title":{"rendered":"Ballon d’Or Bellingham is officially back! England icon Jude picking up where he left off at World Cup with Real Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Ahead of Malaga’s visit to the Bernabeu on Sunday, Mourinho was asked whether Bellingham is the glue that holds his Madrid team together, and he had no inclination to disagree: “He\u2019s a unique player, super-important for the team.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Madrid started on the front foot, and in the 19th minute, the ball broke to Bellingham some 30 yards from goal. He proceeded to drive towards the box, flooring one Malaga defender before gliding past another two and sliding a shot through the goalkeeper’s legs with unerring composure to make it 1-0.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seven minutes later, Bellingham rose to head the ball past Malaga’s hapless No.1 Alfonso Herrero after he’d pushed an Mbappe shot up into the air. It ultimately went down as an own goal for Herrero because Carlos Puga’s attempted clearance deflected back off the ‘keeper and into the net, but Bellingham forced the error.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mbappe got his goal on the half-hour mark, and Guler added gloss to the scoreline late on as Madrid made it nine points out of a possible nine in La Liga. Bellingham, who also smashed a shot against the post in the second half, was serenaded with a a chorus of ‘Hey Jude’ by the Madrid faithful after being substituted three minutes from time, which was a just reward for his stellar work on and off the ball.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I feel more free right now. I have more freedom to move, to go up and down the pitch, depending on what we need,” Bellingham told Madrid’s media channel after the win. “I\u2019m having a lot of fun and that\u2019s why I\u2019m performing well.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahead of Malaga’s visit to the Bernabeu on Sunday, Mourinho was asked whether Bellingham is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}