Jude Bellingham's debut season is on course to be one of the greatest ever

This century Real Madrid have broken the bank for a Brit once every ten years – Beckham in 2003, Bale in 2013, and Bellingham in 2023.

The first two had good debut campaigns, Bale especially, but what Jude Bellingham is achieving in his first year in Spain is little short of extraordinary.

With the Champions League still to be concluded his debut season is on course, not just to go down as 'best of British', but one of the greatest ever.

The comparisons with David Beckham and Gareth Bale help illustrate the point. Beckham scored three league goals in his first season, and one in the Champions League. Played out of position in central midfield he won over team-mates and supporters but won nothing, and his coach Carlos Quieroz was sacked after the last game.

Bale, 10 years later, topped that by some distance. He ran half the length of the pitch five minutes from time in the Spanish Cup final to score the winner against Barcelona. He also scored in an epic 4-1 Champions League final extra-time win over Atletico Madrid. He got 15 league goals, six in the Champions league – 22 in total. But Madrid did not win the league, finishing third behind Barcelona and champions Atletico Madrid.

Fast-forward another decade and Bellingham is ripping up the record books. He has scored 21 goals in all competitions – one short of Bale’s tally with six league games and possibly three Champions League games still to play.

He has won both league Clasicos with late goals, his first in the win away at Barcelona earlier in the season remains a goal of the season candidate. Only Girona striker Artem Dovbyk can stop him finishing the campaign as the league’s top scorer and he could be crowned Spanish Champion as early as the first week in May.

And it is so much more than that. Bellingham is the darling of the Bernabeu. The stadium greets his goals with stirring versions of ‘Hey Jude’ – many a top international has spent years at the club without his name being sung by supporters. Cristiano Ronaldo scored 33 goals in his first season at Madrid but for much of his time at the club you were more likely to hear nostalgic Manchester United fans still singing his name at Old Trafford than the Madrid faithful.

And Bellingham’s appeal has spread beyond his club. He’s become the new poster boy of La Liga with rivals and team-mates mimicking his arms-outstretched goal celebration and cutting huge holes in the back of their socks to let their calf muscles breathe, just as he does.

In a recent interview with Mail Sport, Bellingham’s team-mate Joselu admitted: ‘Everyone we face would rather Jude wasn’t playing. I’d seen him play because I follow the Bundesliga but the level he has reached as a goalscorer is completely unexpected, and physically he’s a beast.’

The stamina levels have stunned everyone at the club almost as much as the goalscoring. Ancelotti avoids taking him off because he knows that while others wilt in the final moments of games he looks stronger than ever.

The point was proved again last night when he burst into the area unmarked on 91 minutes to score the winner. It was the fourth winning goal he had scored in added time this season. He made it 2-1 to Real Madrid in the season’s first Clasico in minute 92. He scored in minute 95 to give Madrid a win over Getafe in the league last September. And he gave Real Madrid a 1-0 win over Union Berlin in minute 94 in the Champions League group stages.

For goals and assist totals in the Champions League only Harry Kane who he will face in Munich next week has more. Kane has seven goals and three assists – Bellingham four goals and four assists.

In Europe’s big leagues his 21+10 for goal and assists places him 11th – only Girona striker Dovbyk has more than him in Spain with 18+5.

There are still things to achieve. He will want to emulate Bale (and Zinedine Zidane) by winning the Champions League in his first season.

At the moment the talk in Madrid is of him emulating Alfredo di Stefano. The comparison was first made back in November when it was noted that Bellingham has scored 14 goals in his first 15 games – two more than Di Stefano managed in his first 15. The future will decide if long-term legacies can be compared – Di Stefano arrived in 1953 and won eight of the next 11 leagues, and five European Cups before 1960. But in terms of impact it’s fair to say that first impressions are of similar jaw-dropping levels of awe.

Comparisons are generally easier to make sticking to the last 30 years or so and there will be Barcelona supporters who rightly point to the astonishing first and only season of Ronaldo Nazario at the Camp Nou under Bobby Robson in 1996-97.

But for blockbuster Madrid signings Bellingham’s beginning has beggared belief – and he’s pulled it off aged 20. Zidane was 29 when he arrived, Cristiano Ronaldo 24.

And to think back in the summer more than a few Madrid commentators expressed doubts over the signing. He was young and he was British – would he struggle to win things like Beckham, or find it hard to fit in like Bale?

Those concerns lasted for as long as it took him to score his first goal. Twenty-one goals later, and after only 10 months, he is bossing one of the biggest clubs in the world.