Jude Bellingham has just delivered one of the finest World Cup performances ever seen from an England player, scoring seven goals before the Three Lions fell to Argentina in the semifinals.
After a well-earned break, the midfielder will return to prepare for the 2026/27 season with Real Madrid. But a recently surfaced childhood memory has caught fans' attention—revealing that Bellingham once dreamed of playing for Madrid's fiercest rivals, Barcelona.
In Spanish football, Barcelona and Real Madrid are the two biggest clubs, and their rivalry produces some of the most exciting matches in the sport—El Clásico. Bellingham has faced Barcelona 10 times, scoring four goals and providing two assists.
However, a post shared on Instagram this week shows that in his primary school leavers' book, the now 23-year-old wrote down his ambition to play for Barcelona—not Madrid.
The post reads: "Long before he was starring for England, Jude Bellingham had already written the dream down. In his primary school leavers' book, Bellingham said he wanted to become a professional footballer for Barcelona and England, and even wrote that his dream was to go on a football tour with David Beckham. Years later, he's become one of England's biggest stars and has even followed Beckham by playing for Real Madrid."
Despite now playing for Cristiano Ronaldo's former club, Bellingham has previously made his preference clear when asked to choose between the two all-time greats. In 2023, he said: "Messi for me, for sure. You can just watch him and think, 'How does he do that?' Every time I watch him, he just does something that I just think, 'You can't be human.'"
