Bellingham’s overload of alpha energy is part of England’s Euros instability | Barney Ronay
While Uefa look at the player’s crotch-grabbing antics, Gareth Southgate must harness his game-changing instinct
It’s day 19 in the Euro 2024 Haus. Cristiano Ronaldo has finally pared his entire on-field performance down to a series of viral reaction memes. German police are to be given tasers and sniper rifles to deal with a raised threat of beaming, selfie-grabbing children whose parents need to have a look at themselves. And a formal investigation is under way into whether Jude Bellingham grabbing his imaginary balls really is a private joke among his friends or an insult to Slovakian manhood.
In fact only one of these statements is demonstrably true at the time of writing. But it does raise many other lines of inquiry. What kind of investigation is this exactly? What kind of friends are we talking about here? And what is the chance any sanction for breaching “decent human conduct” (Uefa translation: racism, arguably no; dick gesture, zero tolerance) will be delayed until after the tournament’s second most famous man is safely packed off somewhere else?
