Jude Bellingham: The Next Frank Lampard for Real Madrid?

Steve McManaman can see the echoes of Frank Lampard in Jude Bellingham under Jose Mourinho – but he thinks Real Madrid’s new era will only truly make sense once the pieces around him are fixed.

The former Real midfielder believes Bellingham has already shown he can be that late-arriving, goalscoring force from midfield, but warns that his role has shifted so often that only this season will reveal whether he can become Mourinho’s “Lampard Mark II”.

“He did that in his first year, didn’t he,” McManaman said, speaking to GOAL on behalf of Disney+, who will show Mourinho’s first La Liga game back in charge on ESPN this Saturday when Real visit Espanyol. “But time will tell because the year before last he dropped a little bit deeper, and last year he struggled for goals.”

The arrival of Kylian Mbappé changed everything. Bellingham, once the central figure in the final third, suddenly had to adjust.

“I think with the introduction of Kylian, his role changed,” McManaman explained. “Whether Jose will want to play that role this year, we'll have to wait and see. It seems that he wants to play Kylian, Vini Junior and Yan Diomande, and that's going to be the big point in the end – whether the space is there for Jude to make that front four.”

That’s the tactical tightrope. A front four of Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior, Diomande and Bellingham sounds devastating on paper. In La Liga, McManaman can see it working in bursts.

“I think in La Liga, in certain games he'll get away with it, that front four,” he said. “He'll be driving forward and he'll certainly score goals Jude, because that's what he wants to do and he loves to attack those avenues arriving late, so let's hope that happens. But we'll all have to wait and see.”

The real puzzle, in McManaman’s eyes, lies with the two superstars who now define Real Madrid’s attack.

“I think the biggest conundrum is getting the best out of Kylian and out of Vini Junior and seeing where they both want to play,” he said. “Because as we know, and you only have to see the World Cup, both of them like to drift out to the left and both like to stand left.”

That overlap on the left flank creates a simple but crucial question: who stays central?

“It'll be interesting whose job it is to stay in the centre of the box and stay in the centre of the park because both like to come towards the ball,” McManaman added.

For all their goals, Mbappé and Vinícius are not classic No.9s. Real have tried to address that profile in the market.

“They're both not number nines,” McManaman said. “I know they bought a young lad, Carlos Espi, who scored a couple of goals in pre-season already – he is a number nine – and Gonzalo Garcia, who's now at Fulham, was a number nine.”

That contrast matters. The Frenchman and the Brazilian thrive facing play, running at defenders, attacking space. They are not, as McManaman put it, “orthodox fox in the box-type stuff”.

“Vini Junior and Kylian are not, for all the goals they've scored,” he stressed. “They're not orthodox fox in the box-type stuff. So maybe it will be up to Jude to make that push into the box.”

If Mourinho wants crosses and bodies in the area, Bellingham may again become the key figure crashing the penalty spot, just as Lampard once did so ruthlessly for Chelsea.

McManaman’s eye is already on one specific detail.

“I'm waiting to see what Jose does and what Jose changes and how Jose's going to help them operate,” he said. “Because if you've got Yan Diomande crossing the ball into the box, who's going to be there to head them in? You know Kylian and Vini are not prolific in the air.”

That, for him, is where the intrigue lies. Not just in whether Bellingham can mirror Lampard’s numbers, but in how Mourinho reshapes an attack full of stars into something coherent – and who, in the chaos of all that talent, ends up living inside the box for Real Madrid.