The board went up. The number 10 flashed red. And for a fleeting second in the 84th minute against Albania, the mask slipped.

Jude Bellingham didn’t storm off. He didn’t kick a water bottle. He just looked… perplexed.

When Thomas Tuchel replaced the Real Madrid star with Morgan Rogers, the narrative was immediately spun into a web of "attitude problems" and "ego." The body language experts on Twitter were already diagnosing a rift.

But if you cut through the noise, the reality is far more nuanced—and far more worrying for England’s World Cup hopes. As Ian Wright pointed out on The Overlap this week, the problem isn't Jude Bellingham. The problem is how England fans and media treat him.

Wrighty didn't mince his words, and thank God for that.

"I’m worried for Jude," the Arsenal legend said, his voice cutting through the usual punditry waffle. "I don't think they're ready for a superstar who moves like Jude is moving. They can’t touch him. He goes out there, he performs, he says ‘Who else?’... It’s too uppity for some people."

He’s right. There is a strange, uniquely English desire to clip the wings of their Golden Boy. They want him to be world-class, but they also want him to chase lost causes like a fierce terrier. They want the Galactico talent with the League Two work rate.

But you can’t drive a Ferrari off-road and complain when the suspension rattles. To understand why Bellingham looks out of sync with England, you have to look at why he looks so majestic in Spain.

Since Xabi Alonso took the reins at the Bernabéu, Bellingham has evolved again. Real Madrid aren't just winning; they are gliding. Alonso has built a system of fluid intelligence where Jude is the heartbeat—given the license to roam, to dictate, and to interpret space as he sees fit. It is high-concept, high-trust football.

Jude spends his weeks operating in a system that relies on autonomy. He plays jazz. Then he arrives back in England, and Thomas Tuchel hands him sheet music and a metronome.

Tuchel is a genius, but he is a control freak. His England team is a machine of triggers and automatisms. If A passes to B, C must move to D.

This is why Morgan Rogers looked so comfortable when he came on. Rogers, playing brilliantly for Villa, is a player who executes instructions to the letter. He pressed when told, held his position, and kept the shape rigid.

Bellingham, however, is a world-class footballer that wants to express himself on the field as he reads the game. He sees what other simply can't.

When Jude drops deep or drifts wide for England, he isn’t being "undisciplined." He is trying to solve problems on the pitch, just as Alonso encourages him to do in Madrid. But in Tuchel’s rigid grid, that initiative looks like disorder. It disrupts the spacing. It clogs the passing lanes Phil Foden wants to run into.

We are now seven months out from the 2026 World Cup, and England have a tactical incompatibility at the very top of the pyramid.

England have one of the best managers in international football and the best player in the world. On paper, it’s a match made in heaven. On grass, it’s a friction of philosophies. If Tuchel forces Bellingham to become a "system player," they lose the magic that makes him Jude. If he lets Jude roam free, the famous Tuchel defensive structure risks collapsing.

Ian Wright’s warning should be ringing in the FA’s ears. The narrative that Jude is "too big for his boots" is a dangerous distraction.

Bellingham isn't failing England; he is simply speaking a different footballing language—the sophisticated, fluid dialect of Xabi Alonso’s Real Madrid. The challenge for Tuchel isn't to silence that voice, but to learn how to translate it before the plane takes off for the Americas.

In Bellingham, England have the weapon to win the World Cup. Tuchel just needs to figure out how to take the safety off without sacrificing the harmony of the team.