Jude Bellingham’s move to Real Madrid would be a real shame for the Premier League

Maybe they were right to retire that jersey after all. We all laughed when Birmingham City, like an overly-sentimental grandparent pinning a macaroni portrait of the family dog to a fridge door, vowed never, ever to let anybody else wear the number 22 shirt ever again. Ever. At the time, this felt like blinkered lunacy - a heady cocktail of recency bias and hysterical giddiness. Now, as Jude Bellingham stands on the cusp of the biggest transfer of the summer, allow me to be the first to apologise... Sorry, gang.

According to transfer guru/town crier for the FIFA Ultimate Team generation Fabrizio Romano, the midfielder is rapidly closing in on a move to Real Madrid. You might have heard of them, they’re pretty good. Negotiations, as per the renowned Italian journalist, are entering their final stages, and personal terms are all but agreed. If Romano is to be believed, this is really, truly happening.

The knee jerk hunch, the instinctive gut feeling, is that any looming agreement makes sense. Bellingham, this elven prince of English football - the kind of talent of which prophecies have foretold and ballads are eventually written -should take his rightful place in a mystical land of perpetual sunlight, where the citadel walls are steep and steeped, and everybody is draped in shades of ivory white and gold. In Madrid, Jude will have every chance of becoming a new age Galactico, and thus, an immortal.

Makes you bloody jealous though, doesn’t it? For the longest while, there has been a growing, smug assumption that once Bellingham was done with Borussia Dortmund and his German apprenticeship he would come back to England. From a neutral perspective at least, it almost didn’t matter where he ended up, just so long as he was in the Premier League, illuminating and enchanting these leaden shores on a weekly - sometimes even bi-weekly - basis.

It was a similar sensation when Erling Haaland joined Manchester City last summer. Sure, fans of the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal were plumbly gutted, but for the rest of us, it was just exciting to have another all-conquering wunderkind arrive in the self-anointed ‘Best League on the Planet’. For whoever secured him, Bellingham would have been a coup of that ilk.

In the end, of course, all that really matters is that the player himself is fulfilled and content wherever he ends up. If that is Madrid, so be it. Bellingham will join a midfield that, with the incumbent might of Eduardo Camavinga, Aurélien Tchouaméni, and Federico Valverde, could dominate world football for the next decade. It is also strangely refreshing to see an English player who is so dead set on pursuing a career on the continent, and not one where it feels like a latter stage gimmick or desperate cash grab. More power, and the best of luck, to him.

But if we’re being bluntly, unapologetically selfish for a moment, it’s hard not to feel a touch of disappointment too. La Liga’s gain will very much be the Premier League’s loss.