Jude Bellingham's Fight for England Starting Spot Under Thomas Tuchel

Thomas Tuchel has warned that Jude Bellingham faces a genuine fight to nail down a starting place for England at the World Cup – even while insisting the Real Madrid star remains one of his “proper starters”.

Since Tuchel replaced Gareth Southgate in January 2025, Bellingham has started only four games, with three more appearances from the bench. For a player who barely missed a minute at Euro 2024, it is a stark change of status.

The new England manager has instead built much of his early tenure around Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers. The 22-year-old has featured in 12 of Tuchel’s 13 matches in charge and was the only player to play a part in all eight World Cup qualifiers, a clear signal of trust and tactical importance.

Asked directly whether Bellingham now has a battle on his hands to make the XI, Tuchel did not dodge the issue.

“Yes, he has,” he told reporters. “He is one of the starters, he knows he is one of the starters, but we have 14 or 15 potential starters.

“These roles can always change, but at the moment I think there are 14 or 15 proper starters and Jude is one of them.”

That is the paradox of Bellingham’s England life under Tuchel: a “starter” in status, but not always in the team sheet.

At Euro 2024, the midfielder was untouchable. He started all seven matches, missing just 29 minutes of the entire campaign as Southgate leaned heavily on his drive and personality. Under Tuchel, injuries, competition and a strained relationship have combined to complicate that picture.

Bellingham missed two qualifiers last September with a shoulder injury. When he recovered, he found no immediate route back: Tuchel left him out of the October camp, including a qualifier against Latvia, a decision that raised eyebrows given his standing in Madrid and his influence for England in the recent past.

He returned in November, only for a persistent hamstring issue to rule him out of friendlies in March. The stop-start nature of his season has not helped his cause.

Nor has the public tension between player and coach. Tuchel’s assessment of Bellingham’s on-field behaviour during England’s defeat to Senegal last June – he called it “repulsive” – put their relationship under an unforgiving spotlight. The German later apologised, but the remark lingered.

In November, after Bellingham reacted angrily to being substituted in a qualifier against Albania, Tuchel said he would “review” the midfielder’s behaviour, another reminder that this was not a simple case of a star name walking into the side on reputation alone.

Yet the mood music around Bellingham shifted in Tampa on Saturday.

Coming on at half-time in England’s 1-0 World Cup warm-up win over New Zealand, he took the captain’s armband and, crucially, Tuchel’s praise. The manager spoke of a player who had rediscovered his edge at exactly the right moment.

“You can see Jude has for sure the decisiveness and bite,” Tuchel said. “This is his key characteristic, but you can see that he comes from an injury and is full of energy and happy to be back on the pitch.

“He had his break, unfortunately, in a decisive part of the season, the Champions League season and campaign for the championship in Spain, so this was very unfortunate for Real Madrid and for him personally.

“But you can see now that he is actually in a sweet spot. He comes back, he's fresh, he wants to play and he's in top shape.”

That “sweet spot” might yet define England’s World Cup. Tuchel has deliberately fostered a squad in which 14 or 15 players can start without the team losing rhythm, and Rogers’ emergence has underlined that no one, not even Bellingham, is immune from rotation.

Yet when a fully fit Bellingham is bristling with that “decisiveness and bite”, when he is wearing the armband and driving games from midfield, it becomes harder to imagine an England side that can afford to leave him out.

Tuchel insists the fight for places is real. The question now is whether Bellingham turns it into a contest that never truly feels like one.