Bizarre Bellingham agenda continues even after ‘major U-turn’ for star dropped due to ‘concerns over attitude’ | OneFootball

Jude Bellingham is back in Thomas Tuchel’s England squad in a ‘major U-turn’ foreseeable months ago for a player dropped due to ‘concerns over his attitude’.

Ring my Bell

In an eminently predictable turn of events, Thomas Tuchel has recalled Jude Bellingham to his latest England squad. And equally expectedly, there are attempts to feign shock and manufacture controversy.

Craig Hope in particular has invested far too much time and effort over the last couple of international breaks into the idea that Tuchel has sought to make an example out of the ‘intimidatory’ Bellingham and his apparently gargantuan ‘ego’ to stop now.

So the routine return of one of England’s best players now he has featured prominently for Real Madrid and recovered his fitness after major surgery must become this from the MailOnline…

All caps? Really? And ‘major U-turn’? As Tuchel said in October, Bellingham “deserves always to be in camp” but “he has not fully gathered rhythm yet at Real Madrid. He’s back in the team, he hasn’t finished one full match until now, he has only started one match.”

Since then he has missed just four minutes of Real Madrid’s five games, scoring three goals, assisting one and dominating an El Clasico. So as the plan almost definitely always was, he is back in.

Hey, Jude

That MailOnline headline was actually changed later on Friday morning to this:

…which is just a complete and utter lie, isn’t it?

It’s not hard to learn, it’s called the U-turn

He writes that ‘the Real Madrid midfielder was left out of last month’s matches against Wales and Latvia despite declaring himself available following shoulder surgery,’ completely ignoring Tuchel’s rather important quote about “rhythm”.

He says ‘Tuchel has spoken repeatedly about the want for his players to be good team-mates and of his desire to create togetherness within the squad,’ implying that those were points made by the England coach specifically about Bellingham rather than, as was clearly the case, the team in general.

He adds that ‘it was in June that he revealed his own mother found some of Bellingham’s on-field behaviour ‘repulsive’,’ neglecting to mention that it was in August that Tuchel apologised for using a word “unintentionally” in his second language.

‘It led to the possibility of the German pressing ahead with World Cup preparations without one of his most gifted players, especially when he praised the attitude of the players selected in his absence,’ Hope continues, flogging a horse long since turned into glue and lasagne.

It only led to the possibility of Tuchel ‘pressing ahead with World Cup preparations without one of his most gifted players’ in your head. It was a completely confected scenario based on some weird agenda about an ‘elephant’, seemingly largely because Bellingham is quite difficult to nail down for an interview.

As Tuchel said of Bellingham and Phil Foden – is his recall not a ‘major U-turn’ too? – “we are delighted that they are back. I think the contribution of both of them for their clubs lately was immense. They play regularly and are a big part of the success of Real and Man City’s matches lately. We’re delighted that they’re in shape and in form and are back with us.”

The rough translation on Bellingham: ‘he is actually playing now so obviously I’ve called him up, stop being weird.’

Tuchel also called bringing Bellingham and Foden back into the squad a “no-brainer”. Quite.

On the Virg

This is just a bit weird from the Liverpool Echo, who very much play to the gallery on the Virgil van Dijk and Wayne Rooney situation.

‘Virgil van Dijk forces Wayne Rooney to cave after Liverpool star ‘blindsided’ him,’ is their headline to a story which does include Rooney saying he was perhaps “a little bit unfair” when saying Van Dijk “downed tools” after signing his new contract.

He also added that “from a performance point of view, I was speaking about what I felt and what I was seeing, and I felt I was right”. Which doesn’t particularly sound like a man who has just been ‘forced’ to ‘cave’.

Mo problems

‘Mohamed Salah ‘set for Egypt talks’ as Liverpool forward could miss eight or more games’ – Liverpool.com.

‘Mohamed Salah’s new club v country row with Egypt that could see him miss TEN games’ – MailOnline.