Bellingham silences doubters with goal as England edge Croatia 4-2 in World Cup opener

Jude Bellingham scored and delivered a commanding second-half display as England opened their 2026 World Cup campaign with a 4-2 victory over Croatia at the giant Dallas Stadium, silencing a months-long debate over whether he deserved a place in Thomas Tuchel’s starting eleven.

Harry Kane grabbed the headlines in one sense, netting twice to draw level with Gary Lineker’s England record of 10 World Cup goals. But the evening carried particular weight for Bellingham, who has spent much of the past year fending off doubts — some of them voiced by his own manager.

“It’s good to put some of the noise aside and just show my country and my teammates how committed I am to helping us win football matches,” Bellingham said after the final whistle, referencing a turbulent build-up that included a Daily Mail headline urging Tuchel to leave him out of the squad entirely.

The scrutiny had been building since last September, when Bellingham missed England’s qualifiers following shoulder surgery. In his absence, Morgan Rogers excelled in a 5-0 win over Serbia — England’s best performance of the Tuchel era — and the manager subsequently omitted Bellingham from the following camp even after he had returned to fitness at Real Madrid. Tuchel also drew widespread attention for describing Bellingham’s on-field behaviour as “repulsive”, a remark he later attributed to a slip in his second language and apologised for.

Even after Bellingham made the World Cup squad, his place in the starting line-up against Croatia was not assured. Asked before kick-off why he had chosen Bellingham over Rogers, Tuchel offered a notably lukewarm answer. “It was really close,” the manager said. “In the end we stuck with the team that played and started so well against Costa Rica.” He later described the selection as “a 50-50 call”.

Bellingham’s response was to produce the kind of performance that makes such deliberations look faintly absurd. Of his six previous England goals, two had opened the scoring and three had been late equalisers — including the celebrated overhead kick against Slovakia at Euro 2024 — and he added another timely strike in Dallas to make it 3-1.

“I’ve got a chip on my shoulder,” Bellingham said, embracing teammates as he walked off to a rendition of “Hey Jude” from the public address system. For Tuchel, the 50-50 call appears, at least for now, to have landed the right way.