Jude Bellingham hailed by personal icon and Real Madrid legend Zinedine Zidane - "I'm a big fan"

Upon joining Real Madrid last summer, Jude Bellingham opted to take the number five jersey, despite having worn 22 throughout his career up until that point. His reasoning for doing so stemmed from his love for Zinedine Zidane, who also wore the 5 for Los Blancos during his time in the Spanish capital.

Bellingham has since had an incredible start to life at Real Madrid, scoring 20 goals (and amassing eight assists) in just 29 appearances. Zidane has been following the English midfielder’s progress, and it’s safe to say that he has been very impressed, as he stated in an interview with Adidas (via MD).

“He’s an unbelievable player who does incredible things. You could have imagined what he was going to do, but he’s surpassed all the statistics with what he’s doing.

“Don’t forget that he’s only 20 years old. He arrived at Real Madrid with a lot of desire, a lot of goals and he is setting the bar very high. He’s just showing everyone what he is and it’s great to see him like that. I’m a big fan of his and now we want him to win trophies with Real Madrid. It’s everything he wanted for himself.”

Zidane also spoke on the continued speculation surrounding the future of Kylian Mbappe, who has been heavily linked with a move to Real Madrid.

“There’s a lot of talk about this, there’s a lot of stories and rumours but the reality is that we still don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ll see what happens.”

Should Mbappe indeed join Real Madrid in the summer, the prospect of him linking up with Bellingham, Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo and co would be incredibly delightful for Real Madrid, and worrisome for everyone else in La Liga and across Europe.