It was two weeks ago, at a stadium in Hamburg, when an issue that haunts the FA’s stewardship of the England[1] football team but which has remained largely in the shadows, burst into the public domain for the first time.
Mark Bellingham, the father of Real Madrid[2] superstar Jude Bellingham[3] and rising Borussia Dortmund[4] talent Jobe Bellingham, confronted Dortmund sporting director Sebastian Kehl in the tunnel at St Pauli’s Millerntor-Stadion at the end of a game in which Jobe had been substituted at half-time on his Bundesliga[5] debut.
Mr Bellingham was said to have expressed his ‘disappointment’ to Kehl about his younger son’s removal. He was said to have grown ‘emotional’ about the team’s cautious style of play.
Euphemisms are a wonderful thing. I know an increasing number of people to whom Mr Bellingham has expressed ‘disappointment’. It isn’t pretty, apparently.
After the incident, Dortmund reiterated a ban on agents and family members from the dressing room area. ‘We are all disappointed with yesterday’s result,’ Kehl said. ‘And yet, the active area is and remains reserved for players, coaches and management, not families and advisers. That won’t happen again. We have clearly informed everyone involved of this.’
To many within the game, the reports of Mark Bellingham’s behaviour came as no surprise. Count me among that number.
Mark Bellingham’s penchant for tirades burst into the public domain last month when he ran into the Borussia Dortmund dressing room last month
Bellingham Snr, along with his wife Denise, are fiercely protective of their prodigiously talented sons, Jude and Jobe
Jude’s presentation at Real Madrid in 2023, with the family all joining him
I had an encounter with him at Wembley before the Champions League Final between Madrid and Dortmund in 2024 where he was so hostile and rude it was funny. I have mentioned it before but it is worth retelling.
A couple of hours before the game, in which Jude was starting for Madrid, I went down to where Mr Bellingham was sitting in Wembley’s lower tier and introduced myself.
I told him how impressed I had been with his son’s performance at a Real Madrid media day the week before and how it had been a masterclass in communication.
It didn’t go well.
‘Which son?’, he said. ‘I’ve got two sons, you know,’ he went on, his voice charged with anger. I apologised and said I had meant his elder son and that it was a stupid mistake. ‘Yeah, it was a stupid mistake,’ Mr Bellingham said. ‘A lot of people make that mistake and it really p****s me off.’
I should have accepted defeat at that point but I kept digging.
I told him my best mate had been taught French by Mr Bellingham’s dad at Southend High School for Boys in the 1980s and that he was one of his favourite teachers. Mr Bellingham looked away while I was still talking, part-bored, part-contemptuous. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ he said.
That was mild by Mark Bellingham’s standards. More and more members of the written and broadcast media have their own war stories.
A few months ago, a colleague of mine at another organisation, a fine young journalist already widely respected in the game, was invited by the FA to watch an intra-squad England Under 21s match behind-closed-doors at St George’s Park.
Jobe Bellingham was playing in the match and Mark Bellingham was watching from the touchline. Aware that Mr Bellingham, a former sergeant in the West Midlands Police who has guided his sons’ careers with considerable wisdom and shrewdness, acts as their representative, the journalist was keen to observe every reasonable expectation of privacy and waited until after the game to speak to him.
Mark Bellingham is a former sergeant in the West Midlands Police and has guided his sons’ careers with considerable wisdom and shrewdness
Jude and Jobe have both made the switch to Borussia Dortmund, with Jude now Real Madrid’s biggest star
He wanted to ask Mark Bellingham about rumours of Jobe’s impending move to Dortmund from Sunderland because he knew it might have repercussions for his chances of being able to play in the Under 21 European Championship, which England went on to win but which clashed with the Club World Cup, which Dortmund were to be involved in.
When he asked the question, the journalist was met with a stream of invective that was unpleasant enough and hostile enough for him to be startled and angered by Mark Bellingham’s behaviour.
Later, the FA, whose officials were said to be mortified by what had happened, apologised to the journalist. ‘I was very sorry that he had been made to feel that way,’ an FA spokesperson said on Friday. ‘I said I was sorry that it had happened on our premises.’ For now, it rests there.
A witness to the incident at St George’s Park was puzzled by some of the body language around the incident. They thought it strange Mark Bellingham seemed to be treated like a dignitary after the match.
To some, it seems strange that the FA chooses to indulge Mark Bellingham’s antics, particularly when his attitude towards many good and extremely able people in their own organisation is often said to be dripping with disdain. They do not deserve that. But the truth is that the game’s governing body is in an invidious position.
As Jude’s father and the man who guides his career, Mr Bellingham wields considerable power within the England setup. I have known a lot of players’ fathers over the years, many of them forthright individuals fiercely protective of their sons, just as Mark Bellingham is.
Neville Neville, in particular, was a principled man who was not afraid to speak up when he thought it was in the best interests of his boys, Gary and Phil, but he had grace and charm and charisma and he did not seek or exercise the power that Mark Bellingham appears to hold.
It is said that Kylian Mbappe’s mother and agent, Fayza Lamari, is a powerful influence in the France setup but in England terms, Mark Bellingham is the daddy of them all.
Consider this, for example: Jude Bellingham made his senior England debut in November 2020 and has won 44 caps in the last five years and yet he has never once spoken to the English media in the informal briefings routinely organised by the FA in the build-up to an international. Every other player steps up. Jude fulfils his contractual obligations. Nothing more.
Some may think that utterly unimportant. There are even some sports journalists who think press conferences tiresome and irrelevant, although they are often the same journalists who use the information gleaned from those press conferences in their own pieces.
It’s understood that there is a feeling of a divide in the England camp over the special treatment that Jude Bellingham is afforded
Every England player conducts media duties when asked – but not Jude Bellingham
The point is that every other England footballer of the last 30 years has fulfilled his media duties within the England setup when asked, at least some of the time.
If you think Bellingham is popular now, you ought to have seen the mania that surrounded David Beckham at the start of his career. He appeared at those media briefings. The same applied to Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard.
More pertinently, every other current England footballer fulfils media duties before games. Some believe Mark Bellingham’s hostility towards the media and Jude’s reluctance to speak to the England media outside his contractual obligations has become a damaging point of division within the squad. Other England players have wondered why Jude Bellingham should be a special case.
Many ex-players and observers have started to notice that Bellingham often seems a man apart at England get-togethers. The FA are eager to get Jude to fall into line with standard media duties but they are too afraid to take on him and his father.
Why, exactly, they are afraid is unclear but many believe it is because they are fearful that forcing the issue would prompt Mark Bellingham to withdraw Jude from England commercial appearances and that they are not willing to countenance the financial hit they would take if that happened.
Jude Bellingham, at 22, is commonly regarded as the team’s leading player. He is also regarded as its most bankable player and its greatest commercial asset. If he stays fit after his return from shoulder surgery, he should be an England regular for the next 10 years at least. He could break every appearance record there is. He and his father are too valuable to upset.
Off the field, Mark Bellingham and his wife, Denise, have done a wonderful job of bringing up their boys. Their sons are articulate, charming and humble. They treat people, whatever their rank or status, with respect.
But there are also concerns that Jude has started to see enemies where there are none. Last November, he said he felt he had been made a scapegoat for England’s failure to win Euro 2024, a comment that was met with widespread puzzlement.
When Thomas Tuchel was appointed England manager in October last year, there was a hope within the FA that his famously brusque approach to player egos and entourages would begin to bring the way Jude was treated into line with the rest of the squad.
In the early stages of an interview with talkSPORT in June, Tuchel began to offer some mild criticism of Jude Bellingham that many interpreted as the beginning of the end of the period when the player was treated as a man with special privileges.
There are also concerns that Jude has started to see enemies where there are none
It had been hoped that new England manager Thomas Tuchel would curb Bellingham’s worst behaviour – but then he slipped up in one of his early press conferences
‘The edge that he brings needs to be channelled towards the opponent,’ Tuchel said, ‘towards our goal and not to intimidate teammates or to be over-aggressive towards teammates or referees, but towards opponents. And always towards the solution, meaning towards winning. And we are on that, yes.’
But then, as Tuchel chatted to presenters Adrian Durham and Stuart Pearce, he malfunctioned. ‘If Bellingham smiles, he wins everyone,’ Tuchel said. ‘But sometimes you see the rage, the hunger and the fire and it comes out in a way that can be a bit repulsive, for example, for my mother when she sits in front of the TV.’
Repulsive? It was an awful word to use and everyone knew it straight away. Tuchel’s use of English is generally excellent but this was a deeply unfortunate error made in his second language.
Mark Bellingham is the type of guy who gets angry when you tell him his elder son is a deeply impressive young man. Heaven only knows how he reacts when the England boss calls Jude’s behaviour ‘repulsive’. An image of Krakatoa blowing apart might be a decent guide.
Tuchel’s mistake and the resulting furore is thought to have ended any chance of Mark Bellingham and Jude acceding to the FA’s wishes about non-contractual media appearances for the foreseeable future.
Tuchel made a public apology for his comment last week as the England squad met up ahead of the World Cup qualifiers against Andorra, on Saturday, and Serbia, in Belgrade on Tuesday, but there is still damage to be repaired.
More than he ever was, Mark Bellingham is still the daddy.
References
- ^ England (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Real Madrid (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Jude Bellingham (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Borussia Dortmund (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Bundesliga (www.dailymail.co.uk)