Borussia Dortmund midfielder Jobe Bellingham is gradually making his mark after a slow start ahead of his return to England to face Manchester City on Wednesday.
Jobe joined Dortmund in the summer, aged 19, for a reported fee of 30.5 million euros ($35 million) from Sunderland, among the most expensive transfers in Dortmund’s history.
Jobe followed in the footsteps of his brother Jude, who moved to the Westfalenstadion five years earlier, aged 17.
Jude became one of the most sought-after players at Dortmund and is now a true superstar after moving to Real Madrid in 2023.
While Jobe has returned to England to play for the under-21s side he captains, Wednesday’s match will be his first on English soil for his new club.
Like City, Dortmund sit in the top eight, having won two and drawn one of their three Champions League games so far.
The younger Bellingham understood a move to Dortmund would provoke comparisons with Jude, but felt the club offered the best place for him to develop.
Like he did at Sunderland, the younger Bellingham has ‘Jobe’ on his jersey rather than his last name, due to his famous brother.
On arriving in Dortmund, Jobe admitted that pre-season comparisons with his older brother were on his mind.
“It’s something you do think about. You have these anxieties, especially me, as I’m only young,” he told reporters, adding, “I’m not perfect. I do think about these things.”
With Jude’s exploits in black and yellow fresh in the mind, Jobe took longer than many expected to find his feet in Germany.
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A decent Club World Cup showing, Jobe started three games, scoring a goal and assisting another before missing a showdown with his brother due to a yellow card suspension, was followed by a more difficult time when the season started.
Jobe was hooked at half-time in his opening Bundesliga game. Jobe’s father and agent Mark confronted Dortmund sporting director Sebastian Kehl in the player tunnel after the match.
The incident forced Dortmund to publicly reiterate “the active area is and remains reserved for players, coaches and management, not families and advisors.”
Jobe started his next league match but was then benched, only picking up minutes in the dying stages of matches and failing to record any goals or assists during his brief cameos.
In mid-October at Bayern Munich, Jobe made a high-profile error, failing to clear the ball off the goal line, allowing Michael Olise to score what would eventually be the winner.
The setback seemed to spark the midfielder, however. Three days later, Jobe started in the Champions League at Copenhagen, laying on two assists in a 4-2 win.
On Tuesday, Jobe helped create Dortmund’s equaliser in a German Cup clash at Eintracht Frankfurt, which his side won on penalties.
And last Friday, the 20-year-old put his body on the line late to block a potential equaliser in the dying stages of a hard-fought 1-0 win at Augsburg.
A Dortmund source told German tabloid Bild on Monday that Jobe was in line to start against City.
While the noise had grown louder around Jobe, perhaps also from inside the Bellingham family itself, Dortmund feel his development is not lagging, but actually ahead of schedule.
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