‘It had to be him’: the meaning of Jude Bellingham’s labor at the 2024 Euros
‘It had to be him’: the meaning of Jude Bellingham’s labor at the 2024 Euros
A look back at the moment of the summer before the 2024-25 football season begins
The expressions that the Liverpudlians wore were familiar, if only because I’ve been to a funeral before. The English men’s football team was down 1-0 to Slovakia in stoppage time in the first knockout round of the 2024 European Championships and England’s fans at the Einstein Bier Haus looked as distressed by the impending loss as they were resigned to it. Then from a throw-in at the 95th minute the ball entered Slovakia’s box and England midfielder Jude Bellingham turned his back to the net, lifted himself from this mortal world, and with his right foot netted the equalizer. It was a bicycle kick from the heavens, the fans delivered from sin.
It was Bellingham’s eleventh appearance for the English national team in the 2024 cycle, on top of the forty-two club competitions he played for Real Madrid this past season. That he had the energy to not only try such a maneuver but also pull it off is a miracle, and one that his side needed. England had entered this year’s Euros as a favorite, their eye on winning the country’s first major trophy since the 1966 World Cup, but the Three Lions labored through the group stage against lesser opponents. A football competition is one thing the English can’t steal.
After another goal in extra time England advanced to the quarterfinals, but it is Bellingham’s goal that replays in my mind. I think part of why the reaction to it was so rapturous was because it was a public service—an individual, desperate act to rescue a people from the brink. The English scuffled all game against Slovakia, and for almost 60 years against everyone, to reclaim some sort of greatness. After Bellingham scored, one bargoer spontaneously, presumably, slapped his mate’s face in celebration. The tournament-defining, nation-saving moment lifted even me, a traveling American relatively new to football, off my feet and left me wondering: why can’t we have this, the opportunity for civic joy and communion, all the time everywhere?
I didn’t intend on being in Liverpool. What tourist does besides an intrepid Beatles fan? But my friend Miles and I knew it was time to leave Manchester after our American tour guide at the Etihad Stadium kept referring to Man City stars and two of the world’s great football players as Erling “Harland” and Kevin “De Bruyner.” Not that I acquitted myself well that weekend. One night we popped into a local boozer and a Mancunian woman made three attempts to chat with me. Amid the din of the pub her accent sounded like mush. I’m still wondering what she might have said.
Miles and I were due in Dublin next, but the England-Slovakia game had been scheduled for our travel day. The only choice was to remain and watch the game in England, though getting to “the South,” to London—my favorite city—involved too many moving parts. Liverpool it was.
Theoretically, Liverpool is an hour from Manchester by train. In reality, it’s as far as it takes. After boarding at Manchester Piccadilly we rode one stop, then parked at the platform where a train attendant informed us of the delay.
“We’re waiting for our next driver,” the young worker said, in his city’s trademark nasality. “He’s getting a taxi from the airport.”
“The bloody airport?” one passenger said. “How long is that going to take?”
“Who knows?” the kid said. He was used to ruining lives.
Someone tipped us off that another Liverpool-bound train was arriving. It was operated by a different company, so I felt compelled to buy another pair of tickets, and it was standing room only after a couple stops. A friend in London always complains about the rails. I tell her at least you have trains. Plus, the scale, frequency, and reliability of the Underground prove humans aren’t so dumb or so selfish. But being in the North, away from the country’s center of gravity for the first time, I understood what my friend meant. Spending £38 to go thirty-four miles, only to experience an immediate, indefinite, and costly delay is more maddening than sitting in traffic in the U.S. (It’s mostly free for drivers to ruin neighborhoods, their souls, and the environment.)
I blame deregulation for this petty indignity. Under the leadership of Prime Minister John Major, an acolyte of his predecessor Margaret Thatcher, the British government privatized the national rail network in the 1990s. The convoluted franchise model was supposed to result in private train operators competing in the free market through better service and prices. It was an odd goal, considering the British rail service had already been a model of efficiency and innovation in the postwar era.
Instead, many operators lost their franchises for failing to meet their financial or service obligations, often leading to the government rebidding the franchises or taking them over entirely. One of the ironies is that franchisees often have difficulty turning profits on short trips between small cities, in the very areas where the Conservative Party finds its grassroots support. Politicians love a free market as long as their constituents aren’t subject to one.
England’s East Coast Main Line is an illustrative example. The company GNER operated the line’s franchise from 1996 to 2006, at which point the government rebid the contract due to GNER’s financial issues. National Express was next up and it failed. Then the government started running the line in 2009 as the East Coast Main Line Company, and customer satisfaction and punctuality improved on the re-nationalized service. It also generated a £1 billion profit on behalf of the British public. For some reason, the government rebid the franchise in 2015 and awarded it to Virgin Trains. That company failed three years later.
Today, rail service is a national punchline and confused tourists like me put one hand on the telescoping handle of a roller bag and have the other type into an iPhone “Is there a difference between Northern Rail and East Midlands Railway?” Standing on the Oxford Road platform I looked like the new kid at school trying to interpret a class schedule in a busy hallway. “A shame, that,” I imagined a local thinking. “Those Americans sure are loud for knowing fuck all.”
The new Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to “overhaul Britain’s railways,” according to the party’s manifesto, although you’d have to squint to realize its goal is re-nationalization. Labour doesn’t use that term, and it couches its plan for the government to take over expired franchises in corporate-speak. “Great British Railways will deliver a unified system that focuses on reliable, affordable, high-quality, and efficient services; along with ensuring safety and accessibility,” the manifesto states. “It will be responsible for investment, day-to-day operational delivery and innovations and improvements for passengers…”
The sterile rhetoric is intentional, according to the BBC, presumably to avoid ginning up a Red Scare. After all, politics is about power, and letting sleeping neoliberal dogs lie is probably best. But spinning re-nationalization as a practical business decision obscures the concept at the heart of public systems: love.
I can be aloof, even with those closest to me. I avoid small talk. Social functions exhaust me. I am more comfortable writing about feelings than feeling them. At the same time, I would jump in front of a lifted F-350 for The People, just to prove a point. (The point: ban cars.) I am obsessed with how the built environment in the U.S. adversely impacts civic life. If sitting at a sidewalk cafe watching the world go by was a job, then I’d be the best at it.
Healthy or not, I prefer to express myself through public service. It’s more powerful, if safer to try to please a population than a person. If my preparing city council agenda or drafting and passing public policy or getting verbally harassed during public comment produces any exchange or surplus value, then I don’t care what it is. The people can have it.
To a private company, mine is merely wage labor—the source of profit and in turn a necessary cost. To a public enterprise, my labor is something else entirely. It’s the belief that we can express compassion systematically. (That public systems in the U.S. are often politicized and means tested shows that our love for one another is highly conditional.) Conservatives bemoan public bureaucracy, but investment in us bureaucrats is investment in the capacity to be good to one another. No private citizen can be good to everyone all the time.
I suspect the real reason why the British grouse about their train network is because it’s no longer theirs. All transportation systems experience delays and face higher costs, but when those systems are run for profit they can feel extortionary and make us feel helpless and isolated. (It’s telling that no one calls for the privatization of roads.) A private train operator may cut or deprioritize service to, say, Kingussie, Scotland, and its 90 daily passengers, but a public service wouldn’t leave them behind. That station may operate at a loss, but routes to and from London can pick up the slack. Subsidizing Kingussie wouldn’t be bad business or a waste of taxpayer dollars. It’d be compassion in the form of rails and rolling stock, and that’s something a people can be proud of.
The same is true of football.
Some people think MLB’s schedule is insane, with the two teams in the World Series playing 200-ish games from February to November, and it is. But baseball players mostly stand around. Unless they’re named Christiano Ronaldo, football players very much do not.
As a midfielder, Spain and Man City star Rodri can run as much as eight miles in a game, to speak nothing of the physicality and effort of that running. It’s no wonder why in April, amid his 58-game season, he said he needed a rest. In July at the Euros, he said he spends his days trying to recover. Same, brother.
In a piece titled “How football reached breaking point: ‘This workload is not sustainable,’” The Athletic explored the physical impacts of the ever-growing football schedule. Rodri’s Man City teammate Phil “The Thrill” Foden, for example, had a chance at appearing in 73 games for club and country last season. And “last season” is barely discernible. Man City’s first warmup for the upcoming 2024-25 season occurred nine days after the Euro final, the same final in which Foden played 89 minutes for his English side.
It is true that elite footballers are rich, but their labor in an economic sense is no different from that of a train driver. Theirs is the wage labor exploited for profit, and to maximize that profit team owners and football governing bodies have turned to a classic tactic: extending the workday, or in this case, the work year. An expanded Champions League and Club World Cup, on top of the standard domestic league schedule, stuffs more football into the European calendar for the same pay. As quality as it can be and as passionate as fans are about it, club football and all other professional sports exist to make owners money. The players are there to do that job.
International football, on the other hand, is a service. England’s national team players reportedly receive just £2,000 per game, which is then donated to charity. During the 2024 Euros, the players’ labor generated untold millions in value to broadcasters, sponsors, and others, but that’s besides the point when wearing your country’s shirt.
Against Slovakia Jude Bellingham gave his country every ounce of work he had left in his 6’1” frame. It was an expression of compassion toward his people. Wittingly or not, the English knew that. That’s why the celebration in Liverpool was so delirious. As with any love, the one for a people can be shattering. The English have muttered to themselves that “football’s coming home” ahead of every international tournament for decades now. It can also be euphoric. Bellingham’s goal was a text out of the blue from the one that got away. Limbs, they call it.
Two games later, England found itself in the Euro final against Spain and I found myself in France. I was scheduled to fly home from Paris the day after the final, but leading up to the game I couldn’t shake a thought.
“Should I go to London?” I eventually texted Miles, who had already traveled back.
“No brainer,” he said.
I took the Channel Tunnel, checked into a hotel by the train station, and started walking up the Regent’s Canal. It was in the 70s and sunny. I came across a lawn packed with Londoners in football shirts. They were biding time watching the Wimbledon men’s final, which was projected onto a big inflatable screen floating in the canal. The young and sturdy sat on the towpath, though they kept a little lane open for passersby. A dog chased a tennis ball into the water.
At the pub overlooking the canal I met a new friend and we watched the game. She cried when England’s Cole Palmer drew the game even in the second half. I flailed my arms, since my seated legs were pinned between the table and the chair. We all groaned when Spain pulled ahead, and no one said anything after the final whistle was blown. We walked back down the canal in a twilight that, during the summer months, clings to the sky. Fueled by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Camden Town Brewery Hells Lagers, I bloviated about public transit and parks and benches and walkable neighborhoods and how the greatest freedoms are those which are public.
In the morning I took the Tube to Heathrow, then I flew home to San Diego. Outside at arrivals it was in the 70s and sunny. Drivers blew their car horns, either signaling to loved ones or cursing other drivers. The 992 bus was late, stuck in traffic. A mass of people looked like me in Manchester, but they were waiting for Ubers, not trains. I took a taxi, whose driver asked me for directions. He pulled up to my apartment building, which has a rooftop pool and bunch of amenities I never use. The wide street, lined with parked cars and double parked delivery vans, was devoid of life.
An extraordinary long form piece of the type that is no longer written. You’re reinventing a genre. Bravo.