Jude Bellingham has to be among the very early front-runners for next year’s Ballon d’Or. Much depends on how Real Madrid fares across various competitions, but it’s never a bad bet to suggest the Spanish giant will go far in Europe, and this season its success is being spearheaded by the English sensation.
Nobody could have predicted just how well he would start in the Spanish capital. Bellingham recently surpassed Cristiano Ronaldo’s record for the most goals in an opening 15 games for the club, scoring 14 across a blistering introduction to La Liga life.
Even those who swore Bellingham would be a massive success cannot have seen this coming. The player who was being chased by the likes of Liverpool and Manchester City was a scintillating blend of everything you could want in a midfielder — Real Madrid has wasted no time in essentially making him a second striker, effectively picking up the slack left by Karim Benzema’s departure.
READ MORE: Jürgen Klopp just gave Liverpool a Newcastle warning as Alan Shearer agrees with Thierry Henry
READ MORE: André Onana just exposed Man Utd transfer truth yet again even after Liverpool did nothing
Clearly, this has to go down as a masterstroke. But Liverpool will not be filled with too much regret either, despite missing out on such a mercurial talent — its attack needs no reinforcement, while the summer saw a highly effective midfield refresh carried out at Anfield.
Giving up on Bellingham early, Liverpool moved on to other plans, and was able to wrap up a swift deal for Alexis Mac Allister by triggering his release clause. Not long after that, Dominik Szoboszlai was brought through the door, also courtesy of a clause.
Mac Allister has been given something like the reverse Bellingham treatment, with Liverpool signing a number 10 and moving him right the way back to number six. As a result, while the Englishman’s move has been more explosive than expected, the Argentine’s has been more understated.
But under the surface, the pair have been performing very similarly. Over the past year, during which time both Mac Allister and Bellingham have played in a variety of midfield positions, the Liverpool player ranks as the single most statistically similar player to the Real Madrid man, per respected website FBref.
That will presumably change once the goal threat from Mac Allister’s Brighton days starts to filter out of the rolling year-long assessment, but there are significant similarities in the two players’ skill-sets. If nothing else, not many could flit between such disparate positions and still look at home in an elite side.
Sign up for our EXCLUSIVE Liverpool.com newsletter!
![Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp.](https://i2-prod.liverpoolecho.co.uk/incoming/article28219150.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/0_GettyImages-1748470251.jpg)
If you enjoyed this piece, you'll love our Liverpool.com newsletter — once a week, we send exclusive, bonus content only to people signed up to our mailing list!
Our newsletter subscribers get an extra slice of Liverpool.com from one of the best Liverpool FC writers around — straight to your inbox, and completely for free.
Wherever you are in the world — in the US, the UK or further afield — you don't want to miss out.
Sign up to the Liverpool.com newsletter here — it only takes a few seconds!
But then things start to get really strange. Second on FBref’s list of similar players to Bellingham is none other than Szoboszlai — and moving down to sixth, Harvey Elliott can be found too.
No other club has more than one representative on the list of similar players to Bellingham. Without actually having him, Liverpool seems to have effectively constructed a midfield full of players like the former Borussia Dortmund man.
Indeed, fielding a trio of Mac Allister, Szoboszlai and Elliott is far from outlandish, given how Jürgen Klopp is using the former Brighton star. It could even be the starting midfield against Fulham, given how well Elliott did in midweek against LASK.
One midfield which has been used fairly regularly involves Ryan Gravenberch in place of Elliott. The Dutchman misses out on a place on the Bellingham list — but reversing the search, and looking for players most similar to the Liverpool star, Bellingham is right there at number one.
This is genuinely uncanny. Obviously, FBref is not the font of all knowledge, but its player comparison tool is built solely on cold, hard data. For Liverpool to have as many as four players with such notable similarities to Bellingham, a player it pursued so hard for such a long time, seems unlikely to be pure coincidence.
The great thing about having so many players similar to Bellingham is that it means Klopp has an array of uncommonly multi-faceted midfielders. As a result, they can all be fielded together, producing a genuinely world-class engine room.
Given that this was last season’s major problem area, the speed and scale of the turnaround is astonishing. Mac Allister, Szoboszlai, Elliott and Gravenberch will need to work hard to earn continued comparisons to Bellingham, but it’s safe to say that Liverpool’s midfield is in excellent hands.