Real Madrid's Jude Bellingham's Dad Called Up for England Veterans

Jude Bellingham's father, Mark Bellingham, has just been called up by the England veterans' national team (over 50 years old) to play a match against Ireland. The Daily Mail highlights that this England national team category is the current world champion, after having won its ninth trophy earlier this year in Thailand.

With this call-up of Mark to the England veterans national team, there will be three Bellinghams who have had international participation. Because Jude has already played 60 matches with the Three Lions senior national team, while his younger brother, Jobe, has already had participation with the U21. As a curious fact, Mark has the nickname "Pele of non-professional leagues," since he has more than 700 goals to his credit in regional leagues in the United Kingdom.

He achieved that figure during a 25-year career at different clubs in amateur categories. He retired in 2017, and it is estimated that he played for at least 20 different clubs, among which Leamington, Stourbridge and Sutton Coldfield Town stand out. This made the Real Madrid midfielder, Jude, see his father become one of his footballing heroes when he was just a child and watched his father score many goals.

"We talk about footballing heroes, and my father was, so to speak, the first for me. When you go to watch him play every week in non-professional categories, you know, it is not the Premier League or anything like that, seeing his way of playing and the atmosphere that was experienced made me fall in love with football.

So, probably, he was my first hero... After the first few times, I started paying more attention to the matches, to the atmosphere... and since he scored goals, you would see him celebrating them and things like that; then you think: 'I wish that were me,'" Jude acknowledged.

It is clear that Jude learned well from his father and, despite not playing the same position, has inherited the quality he saw in him while he played in regional leagues. Now at Real Madrid, he has been able to fulfill his father's dream, playing for the most important club in the world and winning the most important trophy at the club level, the Champions League. He achieved this in the 2023/24 season, in his first season with the merengue team.

Currently, he has become one of the veteran players in the locker room despite only being 23 years old. He has just had an extraordinary participation with England in the World Cup, in which, alongside Harry Kane, they guided the Three Lions to achieve third place in the world. He occupied fourth place in the tournament's scoring table, with a total of seven goals in eight matches.