Jude Bellingham Reflects on England's Euro 2024 Journey

Jude Bellingham doesn’t bother dressing it up. England reached the Euro 2024 final, came within one game of ending decades of hurt, and yet something felt wrong.

Not on the pitch. Off it.

“We got a few things wrong”

Now in the United States preparing for a World Cup tilt under Thomas Tuchel, Bellingham has lifted the lid on a campaign that looked successful on paper but felt hollow inside the camp.

“At the Euros I think we got a few things wrong off the pitch, I don’t feel the group connected as well as it could have for a number of reasons,” he said from England’s base.

England staggered their way to that final in Germany. The performances never quite matched the hype. The talent was there, the expectation was there, but the chemistry never fully arrived.

“When it came to the tournament, we were seen as one of two or three teams that could win it,” Bellingham said. “We weren’t playing well, which doesn’t help, so even when we were winning, we didn’t get the feeling that we were as happy as we should be.”

The results disguised the cracks. The mood did not.

A brotherhood demanded, not assumed

Tuchel, the man now charged with going one step further at the World Cup, has already nailed his colours to the mast. He wants a “brotherhood” – a word that hits differently when you hear Bellingham talk about what was missing two years ago.

Spain ultimately punished England in the Euro 2024 final, but the unease had been building long before that night. The route to Berlin was a grind, a series of escapes rather than a surge.

England needed Bellingham’s outrageous, last-gasp overhead kick just to drag Slovakia into extra time in the last 16. They needed penalties to scrape past Switzerland in the quarter-finals. They needed another late winner to edge the Netherlands in the semi-finals.

The drama was unforgettable. The feeling, for Bellingham, was not.

The overhead kick that still makes him “uncomfortable”

That overhead kick against Slovakia already sits in England’s tournament folklore. One of those moments you know exactly where you were when it hit the net. For Bellingham, though, the memory is laced with discomfort.

“I still remember how I was feeling at the time. It always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable because it was such a bad situation,” he admitted.

“We weren't playing well. I remember as a kid watching World Cups and Euros where we crashed out against teams we shouldn’t have gone out to and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I’m about to be a part of one of those moments’. It shakes up the whole of English football.”

That is the context behind his unease. The goal did not feel like a crowning moment. It felt like a rescue mission from a scenario England had no business being in.

From fracture to fight for places

Two years on, the landscape has shifted. The backdrop is the United States, the target is the World Cup, and Bellingham is not strolling into the XI on reputation alone.

He faces a straight fight with Morgan Rogers for the number 10 role in England’s opener against Croatia on Wednesday, with Tuchel making it clear that both are in direct competition for that central creative slot.

The twist? The rivalry is rooted in friendship.

The pair grew up in the same area of the West Midlands, played junior football together and know each other’s game – and personality – inside out.

“As a person, he is a top guy, he can get along with anyone, can have conversations with anyone,” Bellingham said of Rogers. “He can be a bit loud. We have debates that turn into arguments a lot. But we get on like brothers, to be fair.”

That word again. Brothers. The very thing Tuchel wants to build around.

Bellingham did his chances no harm with a commanding display in the final warm-up win over Costa Rica, a performance that looked every inch like a player staking his claim for the shirt. Still, he insists the competition with Rogers carries no bitterness.

“The manager has made it very clear in a lot of the times where he has spoken that we are playing for the same position,” Bellingham said. “I know that has eased up a bit more now that he sees me playing more positions and Morgs playing more positions, but I honestly have no ill feelings when he is playing and I’m not playing.”

A different kind of test

This England, under Tuchel, will be judged not only on how far they go, but on how they get there. The scars of Euro 2024 are not from losing a final to Spain; they are from the sense that a golden opportunity slipped by without the team ever truly feeling like a united force.

Bellingham has already lived through one campaign where the noise outside did not match the reality inside. Now he walks into another tournament with a manager preaching brotherhood, a close friend as his direct rival, and the memory of that overhead kick still making him “uncomfortable”.

The question for England is simple: this time, when the pressure rises and the margins tighten, will the bond off the pitch finally match the talent on it?