English midfielder ended ‘goal drought’ with impeccable timing, in a season that could hardly have gone better
Jude Victor William Bellingham, this is your league. The title opened with him and effectively closed with him too, told the way it had to be, an inevitability to it all. In the beginning he had stood arms wide in front of 48,927 people at San Mames, the ground so revered they call it the Cathedral, having scored his first Real Madrid goal on his debut. In the end, he stood arms wide in front of 77,981 at his new home, having just scored his 21st, 17 of them in La Liga. From August to April, Bilbao to the Bernabéu, via Almería and Vigo, Cádiz and Seville, Braga and Naples, more than 800,000 people have seen a celebration that may not be new but which became his and is now the mark of the champions, symbol of this season.
It had been seen after every goal except one but, it turned out, even that was right somehow, as if Bellingham knew. In his first clásico, the game he had watched growing up, he scored the equaliser at Montjuïc. He didn’t go all Christ the Redeemer then but did when he got the winner Madrid-style: after the stadium clocks had stopped, 92 minutes in, an early taste of the epic. Now, six months on, he only went and did it again, a 91st-minute goal carrying Madrid to another clásico victory, 3-2, and towards the league title, nodding as he welcomed the Bernabéu into his arms. With six games left, they lead Barcelona by 11 points. “He arrived at the right time,” Carlo Ancelotti said. “It had been a while since he scored.”
