Jude Bellingham has taken Zinedine Zidane’s famous no.5 shirt upon his unveiling as a Real Madrid player.
The England superstar completed an £88.5million British record transfer from Borussia Dortmund that could rise to £115m in a potentially era-defining move.
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Among the anticipation of the Galactico signing was what shirt number he would take, with his normal no.22 occupied by former Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger.
Instead of a swap, Bellingham has instead gone for one of the club’s most historic shirts, that of all-time great midfielder Zidane.
“Thank you everyone in the room and everyone watching online for joining me for the proudest day of my life, the day where I join the greatest football club in the history of the game,” he said.
“There’s a lot of people to thank for getting me here to this point, Borussia Dortmund, Birmingham City, the people that work there but also the bosses here, Mr President, Juni Calafat, Jose Angel and most importantly my family for all the support and making the deal as easy as possible, thank you very much, and finally. Hala Madrid.”
President Florentio Perez, addressing, the teenager, said: “Thank you for coming, and welcome home.”
Asked why he chose Real over potentially more money elsewhere, Bellingham said: “Money’s not a thing for me, I don’t think about money at all when I make these decisions, I never have and I never will, I play the game purely out of love.”
Bellingham wore the no.22 for Dortmund, Birmingham, and also England at the World Cup, but has now switched to no.5.
Explaining why such an unorthodox number became a trademark, talkSPORT spoke to Birmingham’s head of development Mike Dodds in 2021.
“He would have been about 13 or 14 and like most boys that age, they want to be a no.10,” Dodds explained.
“And I remember, we sat down with him and we said, ‘we think you’re doing yourself a disservice, we think you can do all of it’ [play as a 10, 8 and 4].
“So we came up with, ‘we think you can be a 22’.
“His eyes lit up and we knew had hooked him from then on in!
“We said we thought he could be a holding midfielder, or a four. We thought he could be a box-to-box, which is an eight. And we thought he could be a scorer and a creator, so a 10.
“And from the age of 13 onwards he has held on to that all the way through and you can see that in his game.”
Former Madrid stars to wear the no.5 include Raphael Varane, Fabio Coentrao, and Ballon d’Or winner Fabio Cannavaro.
More will follow.
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