Bellingham and Guler ready for shoot-out with Real Madrid's other young guns

Summer signings join Spanish giants, who have mixed record on bringing best out of teenage stars

New Real Madrid player Jude Bellingham is unveiled at Valdebebas training ground in Madrid, Spain. Getty Images

On Real Madrid’s first day of pre-season, the two most celebrated freshmen arrived with hired chauffeurs. Jude Bellingham and Arda Guler have not been in town long, so sorting out permanent transport arrangements is a chore to come. Besides, both of them have only recently become old enough to hold a driving licence.

Guler, recruited from Fenerbahce ahead of competing interest from various clubs including Barcelona, is 18. Bellingham, the England international signed from Borussia Dortmund, only ceased to be a teenager 12 days ago. As they gathered at practice for a first team talk from Carlo Ancelotti, the head coach, they looked around and saw a club actively rejuvenating.

No longer are there lockers in the dressing room bearing the names of Eden Hazard, 32, or Karim Benzema, 35, two major departures of the summer so far. Alongside Bellingham and Guler were young, ambitious Madrid players who, like them, signed as teenagers in the past and carry an obvious determination to alter the club’s lingering reputation as a dangerous career cul-de-sac for prodigies.

Fede Valverde was among the eager early arrivals at a pre-season that has a staggered start, with most players who were involved in June and July internationals allowed to extend their holidays until later this month.

Valverde came from his native Uruguay into Madrid’s youth system as an 18-year-old; he will be 25 in 11 days' time. Last season, he played more minutes for the senior side than any outfielder other than Vinicius Junior, another who arrived at Madrid aged 18.

Also reporting for duty was Brahim Diaz, who has been a Madrid property since the club signed him from Manchester City at the age of 19. He’s 23 now, and spent the last three seasons on loan at AC Milan, where he won a Serie A title and helped guide the Italian club to a Champions League semi-final.

Back in Spain, Brahim’s aim is to break the mould, reverse a storyline that has Madrid hoovering up precocious talents, failing to use them wisely and in many cases, regretting it when they see them thrive elsewhere.

Famously, there’s the case of Martin Odegaard, scooped up with great fanfare – Madrid were thrilled, as in the capture of Guler, to gazump Barcelona to Odegaard’s signature – and presented, in the winter of 2016 to supporters as the superstar of the future.

He was 16. Ancelotti, then in his first spell as manager, shepherded the Norwegian to the youth team but gave him a first team debut in what remained of that season.

Yet after that, Odegaard would barely be glimpsed in a Madrid jersey. Although he developed impressively through four different loans, to clubs in the Netherlands, Spain and England, the most significant yield for his parent club would be the €40 million they sold him to Arsenal for when Odegaard was 22. Within a year he was named Arsenal captain, ahead of a starring role in guiding Arsenal to runners-up in last season’s Premier League.

There is a reluctance, among Madrid’s management, to risk seeing Diaz, who Milan would have liked to sign permanently, follow a similar path. Nor will Guler be content to accept that loan spells may be a safer path to accumulating experience ahead of establishing himself as a senior Madrid playmaker.

At Guler’s unveiling, he was asked several times by reporters if he anticipated being loaned out. Each time he made it clear he had joined Madrid to compete immediately for a first-team place.

“I’ve been told I’m here to play – going out on loan is not in my plans,” he replied firmly, while acknowledging that for his role, in the attacking zone of midfield, competition for places is stiff: There’s Bellingham, Valverde, there’s now Brahim, there’s Dani Ceballos, and, in his all-terrain midfield capabilities, there’s Edu Camavinga, who joined Madrid as an 18-year-old two summers ago.

There are also the ageless veterans, Luka Modric, 37, and Toni Kroos, 32, still with major roles to play.

“We have players who are growing up alongside these legends,” said Madrid president Florentino Perez, with a nod to the significant transition represented by the band of tyros in their teens or early 20s who could, come the beginning of the 2023/24 campaign, make up an impressive front six in the line-up.

It would have Camavinga or 23–year-old Aurelien Tchouameni at the base of midfield, Bellingham and Valverde on either side and Diaz or Guler just behind Vinicius or Rodrygo, strikers who were both scouted in Brazil when they were adolescents.

“We are strengthening for the present and the future,” added Perez, a future that may well, sooner or later, also include Kylian Mbappe, who is still only 24.