Jude Bellingham is the perfect fit for Real Madrid's lean winning machine... his Champions League final showing was poor but he won (and that bodes well for England at the Euros)

They played in white, just like England, but there was no heroic Wembley defeat. There was, and with great inevitability, an unheroic victory. Real Madrid played poorly and won. Jude Bellingham played very poorly and won. And that should bode well for his country.

Real are perhaps the closest club entity to an international side. There is no real, Real identity. No deep-rooted strategy. No patterns worthy of big-screen analysis. Nothing is inverted or over-thought. They keep it simple by allowing their extroverts to shine. And then, at the end of it all, they win.

They stunk the place out for more than an hour on Saturday night, but those white jerseys were never likely to be stained by defeat. For them, the sweet smell of success was in their nostrils from the start.

Bellingham, at 20, became only the third Englishman to win the Champions League with a foreign club. He did so with one of his worst performances of the season - let’s not dress it up with white and navy ribbons - but then, with seven minutes to play, he found space to provide the pass for team-mate Vinicius Junior to settle the contest. 

It was a moment. A lone moment after myriad moments to forget, but the biggest games and the biggest players are often defined by such. It is why Carlo Ancelotti left Bellingham on the pitch when logic had long since told you he wasn’t going to hit a bull’s backside with a flamenco guitar. 

It is why the young man then had no shame in celebrating like he had bossed the previous 90 minutes and scored both goals himself. He was celebrating being a winner. It did not matter that he and his team had been stodgy and uncertain in a lot of what they did. They are, in reality, a lean winning machine so sure of the outcome.

And isn’t that what England aren’t? Ahead against Croatia in 2018. Lost. Ahead against Italy in 2021. Lost. Level and in the ascendancy against France in 2022. Lost. Goodness, we can even go back to the most painful night of them all on this same patch of storied land, against Germany in 1996. Heroic in defeat. Losers, all the same.

Bellingham won, adding the Champions League to La Liga and the Spanish Super Cup in his debut season in Spain. He is also La Liga’s player of the season. Last year, he won the same prize in the Bundesliga. Ironically, with Borussia Dortmund, this game’s heroic losers. Losers, all the same.

Toni Kroos, playing his last club game, was asked by Jamie Carragher afterwards about the secret to Real’s success, this is a sixth Champions League crown in 11 seasons.

'You don't lose finals,' he said. 'That's a good base to have.’ In words and play there is simplicity. We should not, however, underestimate the depth of thought.

Bellingham, pin sharp in his dark suit, walked the pitch alone more than an hour before kick-off. He was, no doubt, envisaging victory, pre-programming a mindset that knew only one destination. He would play as if still wearing those dress shoes - and, on some level, maybe that should be a worry - but the memory of his young muscles is one of triumph. 

They know no different. Has any English player been so exposed to habitual winning so soon? Gareth Southgate can only hope that feeling infects those then exposed to Bellingham this summer.

But what of his stuttering display and some of the pomp around it? He looked tired. Understandable, after a 47-game season. But there is also a chance some of that fatigue was mental. Project Bellingham - we hear a lot about the unit of family and professional friends around him - has been carefully managed in expectation of this stage. Not anticipation, not hope. Expectation. With that comes pressure. Young Jude is the only variable in that world that exists around him.

He speaks so well, of course, with maturity and authority. But his post-match interview here felt a little contrived. He cried as he mentioned those who had doubted him. No-one has doubted Bellingham. Project Bellingham does not allow for doubt. That is not a criticism, it has contributed to the player’s unbelievable resilience. But there should be concern, too. At what point does it turn to stress? Did we see it on Saturday? Or was this an entirely forgivable off-night?

At one point, he appeared to hold the back of his leg. But then, in conference with Ancelotti while play continued elsewhere, it was the head the Real boss pointed to - he wanted more control from one of his best players. There was a positional shift to a deeper role that worked to an extent, but Bellingham’s most telling contribution was still the assist for Vinicius when prowling the fringe of Dortmund’s penalty area.

And that, too, is a conundrum for Southgate. Does he play his star man in central midfield alongside Declan Rice and ask him for more discipline from deep? Or give him license as a No.10?

The latter lends itself more to moments, and moments make winners. Jude Bellingham and Real Madrid are certainly that. When the ticker-tape settles, that is the real, Real identity.