The kid is an absolute, 100% gilt-edged natural.
Anybody without any knowledge of football would look at that
game and say, do you know what, that kid’s got it.
I’ve been given my chance in the league, in the Champions League,
in the cup, and I’ve taken it so far. So I’ve just got to keep going.
He’s a shining example, not just for the academy,
I think the beauty is that he’s a shining example for the city of Birmingham.
I think he’ll be the best player in the world, easily.
This is a working class area. Football is massive in this part of the world.
St. Andrew’s, Villa Park, the Hawthorns - those are the churches for people.
That’s where their religion is, that’s where they go.
They have certain demands. Whatever your team lacks,
they don't mind if your team is out-thought, out-played, but the minute it’s out-fought, they get angry.
They demand hard work. We’re a working class area, who demands hard work and commitment and loyalty.
And this kid handled that pressure. You and I probably don’t understand it, but at 16, to handle
that pressure in front of a big crowd, on the pitch against grown men. That takes some doing.
His mom and dad are proud as punch and rightly so. They have a lot of
credit to take, because they brought him up properly, which is why he oozes class.
There’s nothing cocky or arrogant about this young man until he gets the ball at his feet.
But off the pitch he’s an absolute 100% gentleman, and that’s the upbringing.
Jude had an incredibly supportive family, his parents were brilliant. They had really high
expectations of what they wanted for him and what they wanted him to be. I genuinely think
it’s a huge reason why her is where he is. They set those expectations for him, but they did it
with lots of love and support as well. If they could sell the formula that would be great.
My first memory of Jude was actually at my interview day.
He actually interviewed me as part of the school council to see whether I got the job.
There’s a group of children from different classes that come and the candidates have a
meeting with them and the kids ask questions and you answer them. It’s just to see how you
interact with the children and stuff. He must have put in a good word, because I got it.
He was fiercely competitive, but in a quiet and kind way.
He wasn’t in your face about it. He would do any sport that was going.
In fact cricket was a sport that he showed a lot of resilience in. He hadn’t really picked
up a bat or a ball and he did the trial and didn’t get into the team. But then Jude being Jude,
he then spent the summer with his dad, practising, working on it and came back
and was one of the best players in the team the following year, and took the school for the first time to the national finals.
We had a PE lesson and we were doing football. Jude was on a team that wasn’t as strong as one
of the teams he was up against. He was up against some of his friends and some very competitive
children. Jude, being the sort of child he was, he skipped past a couple of them with the ball,
and he then would make sure he would square the ball so that one of the girls in particular who wasn’t
finding football easy, he would square it so that she would have the opportunity to score.
My mom is the best woman in the world in my eyes, you know
does everything for me and I couldn’t thank her enough for everything she does.
I knew he was capable of it from the way he was at school and everything. But
the past year he’s grown so much. A lot has happened in a short space of time.
I can’t believe it but yeah, very proud. If he’s happy, I’m happy really. So, are you happy? I’m happy.
I hope my Black Country tones haven’t come through. You all right mate?
That Jude’s bostin ay he?
This is where Jude first started playing his football with myself at about four
years of age. He used to come to our Saturday training sessions.
The chasing games, the fun games and everything he absolutely loved. And to be fair he’d
win every time. But as soon as you actually put a football down and we played a match...
No, he’d sit on the floor, he’d be picking the grass, he’d be sort of running off,
not interested whatsoever. His mom came up to me at the end of one of the training sessions and said,
no, I don’t want to bring him anymore, he’s just not interested.
I said, well, you’ve got to persist with it, you can tell by his athleticism that he’s got it.
He carried on playing and he got more and more involved in the games. Each week he got,
say five minutes and ten minutes in the games at the end. Then by the age of about seven
he was in the top group playing with children a lot older than him.
You watch a game of football, especially at grassroots level, and you look at the
different players, and it’s the way they are with the ball at their feet. Anybody without any
knowledge of football would look at that game and say, do you know what, that kid’s got it.
I remember sometimes he’d have scored six or seven goals, and we’d put him in goal to say,
right, just get the ball and pass it out.
The ball would come back to him and he’d do it a few times and think, I’m bored of this now.
So then he’d get the ball, dribble, dribble, dribble, goal. We were standing
at the side shaking our heads thinking, we put you in goal for a reason. But he didn’t care.
It was great to see. That was a standout moment for me, we did have a laugh about that.
I was here for his first session at seven, and I was actually out on the pitch
when I was helping with the first team, so I was here for his last session.
It’s just a very unique story and journey that was never planned, it just happened for both of us.
Like most kids, he loved scoring goals, running around, ridiculous haircuts.
Hey used to have - and he'll not appreciate this one - he used to have
the old Ronaldo haircut. People that are watching this might know, it's like he’d
shaved all of his head and left a tuft at the front of his head. So he had a tuft of
hair at the front and shaved the rest. He’s had some bad haircuts, he's had some bad haircuts.
I got into the game at seven and didn’t really enjoy it. But I had a bit of raw talent and
I went to Birmingham and they nurtured it perfectly until I was sixteen.
I learned very quickly from when he was quite a young age that he always wanted challenging.
If he wasn’t challenged he would act out, that’s probably the right phrase to use.
But actually that behaviour was just, this is too easy for me.
I want the next thing, I want the next thing. I realised that very, very quickly.
I used to do all of his reviews and sit down. We had a conversation around,
what’s the next step for you, what’s the next stage in your development,
what position do you want to be? I said, I think you can be a 22. The three positions in midfield
are a number 10, which is an attacking midfielder, a number 8, which is a box to box midfielder,
and I know in Europe they call it a six, but we call it a four, which is a holding midfielder.
I said if you put all of those numbers together, it's a 22. We feel that you can do all three positions,
and we feel that you can do all three of those positions in the game.
This is Jude’s age group, his scholarship group. You’ll see that his is slightly different. He
was actually in with the first team at this point. We had to almost superimpose him on.
The reality is, and I genuinely mean this, he probably taught me more than I taught him,
in terms of how to deal with top players, how to deal with difficult situations because there has
been a few, how to allow players to have their own voice. From a personal perspective as a person,
and from a coaching, professional perspective, he probably taught me more than I taught him.
All the time I've known him, he was training 4 or 5 days a week, and then he got a match.
The sacrifices that he’s had to make were big,
that’s why he’s deserved everything that he’s got. It’s not just been given to him on a plate.
The first day that I met him was at a sport induction day,
and he was quiet, he didn't really talk a lot.
And then he started playing and he didn’t need to say anything else.
I remember, I was chasing him for the whole hour. I couldn’t get near him. It was quiet embarrassing.
Because I was playing at a lower level, it made me realise how far off I was being a professional.
Here we must have been eleven years old, and we were in a cup final.
We won 7-1 and Jude scored all seven.
Without him, we wouldn’t have won that game, which kind of summed up his whole time at our school.
All the time, arguing about Villa - Blues, because they’re the biggest rivals in England.
I’m a Villa fan, so when he was playing for Blues it was crazy.
He got me watching Blues. I don’t like to admit it because I hate Birmingham but
watching him, it was surreal. And watching him live, with the crowd, he was loved there.
This is Birmingham’s club. Aston Villa are a bigger club,
they’ve got a bigger history. But this club has got the people of Birmingham.
This is a Birmingham club where people feel it. They come here, and this is their life.
Over the last ten years, it’s been reasonably miserable, but the fans have stuck with them.
Listen, this club has been in the doldrums. We’ve needed a cult hero for a long time,
and all of a sudden along comes Jude Bellingham and becomes one.
Because he’s a home-grown player, that passion and commitment. We’re not going
to have loads of money, so we want our teams to be hard-working, which is what the fanbase is,
and commit to the cause. When you put on the shirt, we expect you to play for the shirt.
The way he used to speak to his teammates,
he wasn’t like a sixteen year-old, he was like a captain.
Because he’s born and bred in Birmingham and his family live here,
Birmingham City supporters always take to their own.
The fans loved him, they still do now, you can tell by that. Do you know what I mean?
He’s loved by the Blues fans and he always will be, and hopefully one day he comes back here.
To be perfectly honest with you it was a question of not
if, but when he would be sold. Because there was no question he would eventually go.
The club was in dire straits for money, and this was an absolute diamond.
I think his dad went to see Man U, they went to see Borussia Dortmund. But I think it was
Borussia Dortmund that impressed him most, because of the way they give youngsters a chance.
In life you have to take opportunities, and this is a huge one for me to play
for such a great club, so it wasn’t too hard making the decision to come here.
We were sorry to lose him to Dortmund, but the Blues supporters fully understood that
in order to reach his full potential, he had to move on.
At the end of the day, it’s his career and maybe one day he’ll come back to us.
When he said he was going to Dortmund, I said the only request I have is,
see if you can get the 22 number. Obviously when Michael Zorc let him know that the 22 would
be his number, he rang me, which was a nice conversation.
There was a number of children, when it was fancy dress day,
they came in with their Dortmund 22 Bellingham shirts. There are a lot of people in the area
who are very excited and proud of the fact that Jude’s come from here and what he’s accomplished.
He’s moved to Dortmund and look what’s happened? He’s playing for England now, he
played in the Euros. If he didn’t make that move, he wouldn’t be playing for England.
To see him pull on the England shirt, I must admit, it made a grown man cry, that did.
I was so chuffed for him and his family. It was marvellous for them. It was wonderful.
He’s come on bounds in Germany, brilliant. I feel good for the lad. When the Euros were on,
we all had England shirts with Jude on the back.
His brother looks like he’s going to follow in the same footsteps.
We’ll be keeping an eye on his younger brother.
Don’t tell him, but everyone reckons he’s better than Jude.
Yeah, he’s at Birmingham, he’s doing really well. So like a normal big brother, I’m so proud of him.
His younger brother is here, and apparently he’s going to be as good,
so we’re told. I’ve not seen that yet, but we’ll wait and see about that. But Jude Bellingham is
not only a wonderful footballer, he’s got the right attitude and the right character.
He can be anything in the game he wants to be. He can be one of the greatest midfielders ever.
He’s done what some people do in their whole careers in two years of playing football.
The sky is the limit. I think he’ll be the best player in the world, easily.
In forty or fifty years’ time, he could be looked back on as one of the greatest ever to
play for England, which would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?
The best predictor of the future is what’s happened in the past. If you look at
what he’s done already in a short space of time, it would suggest that he’s got a massive future.
He could go on to achieve whatever he wants to achieve.