MY ACCOUNT
Mats Hummels lauded Jude Bellingham’s leadership after the Borussia Dortmund midfielder replicated the feats of Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe in a 1-1 draw with Sevilla.
Dortmund fell behind to Tanguy Nianzou’s goal on Tuesday, but Bellingham cancelled out that strike by turning home Thomas Meunier’s cross to score in a fourth consecutive Champions League game.
In doing so, Bellingham became just the third teenager to score in four consecutive Champions League appearances after Mbappe (in 2017) and Haaland (2019) – the latter of whom did so in five successive games.
Bellingham’s return of four Champions League goals is also a new single-season record for an English teenager, beating Wayne Rooney’s benchmark of three in the 2004-05 campaign.
Although the draw represented a frustrating result for BVB, Hummels showered praise on Bellingham, telling Amazon Prime: “Jude always wants to win. In training, in every game. He invests a lot. I think we all love this boy.
“The fact that at the age of 19, he sometimes has to channel certain energies that I would still like to have, is completely normal.
“But seriously, if someone – who has played every minute this season – tries to win every minute, to invest for the team, then he’s allowed to complain.
“I’d rather have someone like him who complains five times than someone who doesn’t say anything at all. Then he can sometimes make wrong decisions, it doesn’t matter.”
Although Dortmund hold a five-point advantage over Sevilla in Group G, Hummels was irritated by a meek display which saw them register just seven shots totalling 0.37 expected goals.
“It wasn’t a good game for us,” Hummels added. “After half-time we lost at least 20 balls easily, unnecessarily leaving the game completely open against an insecure team.
“We didn’t have enough game intelligence. I’m sorry, but Sevilla are very unsettled. They were happy with the 1-1 here, we didn’t manage to build up any more pressure with the ball.
“Football is actually a very simple game, but we always make it complicated for ourselves.”
