There are some Madrid tourists taking selfies outside the Allianz Arena on Monday lunchtime and, as footballing pilgrimages go, this is the one you really have to want. Wedged between two major road junctions and approached either by a concrete jungle of on-ramps or by a 40-minute train ride followed by a long trudge past a sewage treatment plant, this may be the nicest thing that can be said about the location of the Bayern Munich stadium. is that it at least provides easy access everywhere else.
How many times does Harry Kane have to look at this stadium through blackened windows before it starts to feel like home? It will take him years to master the language, if he ever does. The Allianz doesn’t feel like it’s part of Munich, unlike the Estadio Bernabéu which overlooks Madrid or the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium which overlooks the High Road. And, of course, his name has already been made at the boyhood club who still have a buyout clause for him. No matter how long he stays at Bayern, at some level his home will always be somewhere else.
Jude Bellingham has only been at Real Madrid for 10 months, and yet it’s already been 10 years. As he returns to Germany for the Champions League semi-final, he does so as one of the most adored footballers on the planet, as universally accepted as your favorite credit card. More than that: somehow, in his outfit and demeanor, Bellingham seems to represent an intangible quality that goes beyond anything he can do on a football field, the same quality that Kane – for all his talents – has not.
Call it old school appeal, call it romance. Bellingham, according to popular mythology, is the guy who turned out the lights on the petrostates for the timeless white of Real Madrid. Kane is the cynical trophy hunter who joined the guaranteed trophy club and failed to win a trophy. So this is a story about timing and fortune, about how to plan a career in this most unforgiving of businesses, about the choices you make and when you make them. This is how a man with two permanent clubs in 20 years comes to be seen as a calculating mercenary, and a man with three clubs in four years comes to be seen as the epitome of footballing romance. Ancient.
Of course, Birmingham – the city and the club – was never going to hold Bellingham down for long. From an early age, this particularly precocious midfielder was lucid about the direction in which he wanted to take his career. He visited Dortmund, studied their style, observed the development of young players, felt an immediate connection. “I wouldn’t play for a club I really didn’t fall in love with,” he said later.
Three years later, the stakes were higher but the calculations were largely the same. A new train was leaving the station, but to catch it, Bellingham would have to change tracks. Dortmund loved him and he loved them, but Madrid only calls once. His English teammates twisted his ear in Qatar. Gareth Southgate tried to persuade him to join the Premier League. But off the field and on it, Bellingham went wherever he wanted.
Meanwhile, in Kane’s world, horizons were beginning to narrow. If Bellingham was determined to move forward and progress, then Kane was just as determined about the direction his career would take. He wanted to taste glory with Tottenham. He wanted to develop and improve to become a record-breaking Premier League titan at one club.
It did not work. When exactly this became apparent to Kane remains a matter of conjecture. But through the defeat in the 2019 Champions League final, the disintegration of Mauricio Pochettino’s regime, the pandemic-fueled misery of José Mourinho, the very public flirtation with Manchester City in 2021, the deafening stasis of the Nuno Espírito years Santo and Antonio Conte, something essential seemed to break in his mind.
Looking back, his fate was sealed in the summer of 2018, when he locked down a six-year contract shortly before winning the Golden Boot and becoming one of the hottest properties in the world football. It was a romantic gesture. But it was also the moment when doors began to close, when other futures began to evaporate. Of course, he can still thrive, compete and win. But these crucial years lost between the ages of 26 and 30 can never be wasted.
Bayern coach Thomas Tuchel praised the player enthusiastically and effusively on Monday. He described him as “extraordinary”, praised him as “fantastic here in the Bundesliga”, paid tribute to his “enormous level of personality” and the way he handles “this club and all the expectations”. The player he was referring to was Bellingham. When asked how he would rate his own star striker compared to him, Tuchel initially didn’t understand the question, then gruffly dodged it.
There are obviously other reasons, footballing, why these two great English players are perceived so differently. But there is also a lesson here about the importance of recognizing when an opportunity is there and we must seize it. Kane has led his career like a man who always has another season. Bellingham went through his like a man playing his last. Would Bellingham ever allow his career to drift like Kane’s at Tottenham? Would he ever sign a six-year contract at a club reluctant to sell its best players?
This perhaps explains why one of these two actors is on the verge of everything and the other on the verge of nothing. Talent is not enough. Hard work is not enough. Desire is not enough. It takes a little luck and a little timing. Because the future doesn’t wait.
