Jude Bellingham looks amazingly grown up at 18 years of age. Even away from the football field.
The target is currently 30 new laptops. Jude Bellingham raises money on a fundraising platform for a Kenyan school, to the construction of which he himself made a major donation. The Miche Bora School in Mombasa offers 300 children more than just a place to learn: it is a chance for a better future and sometimes the only opportunity for a warm meal.
Jude Bellingham, 18, England national soccer player and professional at Borussia Dortmund, doesn’t seem to be an ordinary young adult. The amazing maturity with which he presents himself in the field is also part of his private life: no boasting, instead responsibility and calm.
“My mother helps me most in staying on the ground,” said the midfielder in the DAZN interview before the league game against TSG Hoffenheim on Friday. “We live together and when we’re at home we honestly don’t talk about football a lot.” Anyway, says Bellingham, his life is “to be honest, quite boring and very normal”.
Which millionaire young star would say that about themselves? “When we train in the afternoon, I like to sleep in,” reports Bellingham: “After breakfast, I watch TV or talk to my mother, go to training and then make myself comfortable on the sofa with reality TV.”
Bellingham: “Almost obsessed with the smallest details”
However, these routines are also necessary: ”When I’m alone, there is nothing else in my head except football.” He is, says Bellingham, “almost obsessed with the smallest details, so conversations on other topics help me a lot and take the pressure off me a little”.
In the end, the audience got to see again and again what it is like when it’s seething inside him. Bellingham then straddles like mad, he runs to the fans and pushes them – sometimes it seems exaggerated, as if he is trying very hard to set an example. “I’ve always had high expectations of myself,” he says, and now and then the right amount is still missing.
In terms of sport, Jude Bellingham rightly sees himself very much grown. He faced many challenges, “whether mental, physical, tactical or technical – at the EM or in other areas”.
For a few days in the summer he was the youngest player in European Championship history, and the title almost worked out. Bellingham was substituted on three times and there were discussions about whether he should have been a regular.
Bellingham: “Confidence in my Abilities”
Of course, things are also bumpy at times. Against SC Freiburg (1: 2), Bellingham lost the ball before conceding a goal.
He takes such opportunities to develop: “I just have confidence in my own abilities and I am convinced that I can stand up to any player on any court.” Sports director Michael Zorc calls Bellingham “our engine in midfield”.
Bellingham has decided to be a drive beyond the football field: as an ambassador and supporter of the “Mustard Seeds” project in Kenya.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login