"F*** me, what a debut!"
That was the reaction of the last English player to make his debut for Real Madrid. A yawning 516 days after signing for the club, Jonathan Woodgate belatedly pulled on the famous white kit, scored an own goal and got two yellow cards.
Jude Bellingham did not have an awful lot to live up to as he faced the same opponents almost two decades later. In a way, it's fitting that Athletic Club de Bilbao, a team founded by British migrant workers and forged into one of Spain's great sides by Fred Pentland a century ago, blooded Madrid's last two English debutants.
Bellingham would be entitled to react to his own opening salvo with the same expletives employed by Woodgate but without the sarcasm.
Here's how Real Madrid's new starlet began life in La Liga.
Jude Bellingham's performance vs Athletic Club
Spanish journalists likened Woodgate to the iconic Fernando Hierro strictly before the first of his nine league appearances. Yet, Bellingham inspired comparisons to club legends after his debut.
By choosing the number 5 shirt, Bellingham invited the Zinedine Zidane rhetoric himself. However, if he continues to deliver displays laced with a regal and robust air, it will be hard to ignore visions of the Frenchman.
Within the opening five minutes of his first competitive appearance, Bellingham had been both the most advanced and deepest Madrid player on the pitch. Crunching into meaty challenges and tip-toeing past attempts to cut him down, Bellingham was a blur. According to the Spanish sports daily AS, "Bellingham is the boss".
Rodrygo had already given Madrid a deserved lead inside the opening half-hour before Vinicius Junior forced a corner kick. Bellingham took the break in play to led Vinicius know he had been wide open for a square pass in the previous move. David Alaba spotted the absence of red and white stripes around Bellingham from the set piece, swinging the corner into his stride.
Bellingham's studs rather than his in-step connected with the cross, sending the ball bouncing into the turf and over Unai Simon's grasp. "I am not going to get too excited by the goal and the win," Bellingham conceded, showing his vaunted maturity for someone that was a teenager in June. "I’ve been taught that if you try to hit the target then you give yourself a chance. I didn’t get the best contact with it, I got a bit lucky, but I hit the target and it went in."
Most of the deafening fans in Athletic's San Mames stadium were not entirely enamoured with the imperious Englishman but his coach certainly was.
"It feels like Jude Bellingham has been a Real Madrid player for a long time," Carlo Ancelotti gushed at the final whistle, "he is out of the ordinary." It remains to be seen whether Bellingham's magisterial display against Athletic will be his ordinary level over the coming season. But it was a night to cherish nonetheless.
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Every English player to score for Real Madrid in La Liga
Bellingham was not the first Englishman to score on his debut for Real Madrid. In 1979, when Bellingham's father Mark was just three years old, Laurie Cunningham found the net not once but twice in a 3-1 victory over Valencia. It was the start of a successful spell in the Spanish capital for a pioneering player that fully embraced the lifestyle in his adopted home.
Steve McManaman loved Madrid so much that he refused to leave even when the club tried to sell him. The former Liverpool starlet had to wait until his second appearance in white to open his scoring account for the club but will forever be remembered for his Champions League final goal at the end of his debut season.
While David Beckham's assimilation to Spain was reflected by a goal 126 seconds into his Madrid debut back in 2003, Michael Owen endured a stickier adaptation.
Owen finished as the team's second-highest scorer in his only La Liga season but would regularly make the trek from his hotel to the airport just to buy English newspapers - which were available at any of the nearby kiosks in the city.
If Bellingham were to venture downtown after his crowning debut on Sunday morning, he would find his image plastered across the front page of Marca beneath the headline: "A player like a cathedral."
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This article was originally published on 90min as How Jude Bellingham fared in his first game for Real Madrid.
