Liverpool legend John Barnes has said that Jude Bellingham cannot win games by himself. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.
Stressing that Jude is not Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, Barnes revealed that Bellingham is more of a Bryan Robson-esque No.8 than a creative No.10 everyone makes him out to be.
John added that even though Madrid keeps pushing Bellingham into a more advanced role, his ability is maximised when operating in a deeper-lying berth.
His words, “The best version of Jude is not going to win us the World Cup. The best version of England is going to win us the World Cup.
Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane by themselves aren’t going to win us the World Cup.
They showed what they can do, which is they can win some games by themselves in terms of the way the team is set up for them to be the scorers.
But if you want to win at the highest level, right at the top, Jude Bellingham by himself isn’t going to do that. He’s not a Messi or Ronaldo, and even Messi or Ronaldo didn’t do that.
He will be part of that but we need to have a better environment to then have a much better team, rather than Jude shining in an average team.
We have good enough players for us to do better than we did from a team perspective.
Jude is not a number 10, he’s an eight. He’s not a 10, he’s not a Messi, he’s not a Wirtz.
That’s not what he is, and maybe he thinks it is, but he is not that. He’s a Bryan Robson, he can get up and down, because he can get back and defend as well.
He’s not a creative player in that sense, like a Florian Wirtz, with the eye of a needle pass and those intricate plays in tight areas. He’s a number eight, which can be of great value, like [Dominik] Szoboszlai, for example.
I think that the manager has to then come up with a way of utilising Jude, maybe not Harry Kane at his age, to find the way that the team plays to suit all of the players, and Jude will be an important part of that.”
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