Yeah, so not with those guys. Bellingham - and I really can't stress it enough - has poor defensive aptitude. This means his sense of positioning, awareness and decision making are poor. Don't confuse him being an active defender with him a good defender. He's not. Not positionally. And Rice is also not exceptional in that regard - very good, yes, but you need exceptional next to a guy who is poor. And that's without getting into how you are going to balance a good defensive transition and structure with a functional attack, with those pieces
Bellingham will leave Rice exposed, or you got yourself a mediocre robot CM. One that is significantly, clearly worse than Mainoo, for example. Also, who is hitting those switches of play? Under pressure? And if the other team doesn't press...then what? You push Bellingham up - thus leaving Rice exposed - or keep him close to Rice, and make his presence on the pitch almost meaningless? I repeat: Bellingham is not a central midfielder, he will never again be one, and asking him to play like one makes as much sense as asking Saka to play left back. Or Foden to play left winger. You either let Bellingham play like the attacking midfielder he is, and that means you accept the high likelyhood of getting exposed defensively, or there is little point to having Bellingham in there at all. England likely will have better options
First: Makelele and Vieira were great at receiving the ball deep and not lose it - way better than Rice or Bellingham. Second: they had Zidane. They weren't asked to do more than "not lose the ball and pass it to Zidane", because they had Zidane. England lack precisely that type of player and it's the main reason that's putting a hard cap on how good this team can be(which is not as good as people assume). England more than anything needs to figure out how to quickly move the ball from defence to the forwards, without the latter having to drop all the way back. Bellingham in a deeper role is not the answer to that
