When you see Jude Bellingham for the first time, you find yourself checking his age. When I saw him for the first time, I did just that.
He was a 16-year-old playing for Birmingham City in the Championship. He was a man in a boy’s body. Now, as a young man, he has everything — athleticism, stature, vision and skill. We are witnessing someone very special and it’s all the better because he is wearing an England shirt.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I was when he did not sign for Manchester United.
I knew when I kept going back to watch him at Birmingham that he was going to be a top, top player. I met him and his parents, Mark and Denise, with Sir Alex Ferguson, Eric Cantona and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
We did what we could to persuade him to come, but ultimately he chose Borussia Dortmund because the family believed they could give him a quicker pathway. I’d like to think we would have done that at United, but who can argue with his choice now?
The maturity and discipline he had to show surviving as a young boy playing and living in Germany gave him invaluable life skills, ones that this summer the family felt had equipped him for a move to a club as huge as Real Madrid.
When you see Jude’s decisions on the pitch, they are born from this football education. He had to toughen up in the Championship, be disciplined in the Bundesliga and now he has to show flair and speed of thought with Madrid.
I’m sure even his father’s profession, that of a police sergeant, has rubbed off on his temperament. We saw at Hampden, he’s so good that opponents are targeting him now.
That will happen — if defenders can’t keep up with you, they’ll wind you up. Whether that’s a push, a flick, a pinch or something sneakier, Jude knows, as a police sergeant would, you shouldn’t be baited by it.
Learning from serial winners at Madrid such as Toni Kroos and Luka Modric will serve to improve him further.
The only limit on what he can achieve with England concerns the players around him.
We had high hopes before with Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, David Beckham and Paul Scholes. All great talents, but they didn’t gel.
This team are benefiting from players being put in the correct positions. Bellingham revels in the freedom of a No 10 role and Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips are the perfect foils.
But please don’t call this a ‘Golden Generation’. I hate that term. Save the branding until they win something, because that’s what they must deliver and, with Bellingham at the heart, they have every chance.
Win a trophy, then his name will sit comfortably alongside any England great.