England midfielder Jude Bellingham is definite his Borussia Dortmund aspect won’t be intimidated by the problem of making an attempt to knock 2021 champions Chelsea FC out of the Champions League in three weeks’ time.
Dortmund beat the Blues 1-0 in entrance of 81,365 at a sold-out Signal Iduna Park due to a elegant solo effort from Karim Adeyemi within the second half, the primary time since 2016 Dortmund had overwhelmed Premier League opposition in Europe.
A second-leg victory at Stamford Bridge on March 7 would e-book Bellingham’s aspect their fifth journey to the quarter-finals for the reason that spherical of 16 was launched, a prospect the 19-year-old is already relishing.
“It’ll be a brilliant experience for us,” he informed CBS Sports Golazo.
“I think we all dream of playing in games like that where we go away to big teams and we try to get a positive result to see our team into the next round, so you’ve got to enjoy games like that, you can’t shy away from it and we’ll definitely be up for it in the second leg.”
The Stourbridge native – a rumoured goal for Chelsea this summer season – is one in every of England’s rapidly-rising abilities after scoring and selecting up an help on the World Cup in Qatar.
Bellingham, regardless of his youth, has already achieved a large number of milestones.
His purpose towards Manchester City within the 2021 quarter-final second leg made him the youngest English participant to attain within the Champions League, at 17 years and 289 days.
Wednesday marked the second time Bellingham, who scored a team-leading 4 objectives within the group phases, was handed the captain’s armband within the Champions League.
The first got here in October’s 4-1 victory over Sevilla with Bellingham – at 19 years and 98 days – additionally changing into the third-youngest captain in Champions League historical past, behind solely Ruben Neves (Porto, 18 years 221 days) and Matthijs de Ligt (Ajax, 19 years 51 days).
Bellingham isn’t aware of his age in terms of his function as a workforce chief, admitting: “I think it comes quite naturally, but for me it’s probably the biggest honour of my career so far, to captain this football club.
“I have brilliant role models like Marco (Reus) and Mats (Hummels) and I know how to kind of carry myself when I see them, they carry themselves so well so I take a lot of examples from that.
England midfielder Jude Bellingham is confident Borussia Dortmund have what it takes to knock Chelsea out of the Champions League (Tim Goode/PA)
(PA Wire)
“I know that without the captain’s armband I can still try and lead the team and this is just kind of a bit more for show, but we need to all be captains in the second leg. It’s important that we all show up and we all get the job done.”
Kai Havertz scored the one purpose in Chelsea’s 2021 Champions League title triumph and was pissed off by Wednesday’s lead to his native Germany, the place the Blues managed 21 makes an attempt to their opponents’ 14 however couldn’t discover the final touch.
He informed the membership web site: “It’s frustrating to lose because I thought we played quite well.
“We created plenty of chances and on another day, we could have scored a couple of goals and the tie would look so different.
“I don’t think we should be too unhappy with our performance because we created the opportunities, but it’s just frustrating that we couldn’t take any of them. We have to look at that and try to improve on that front.”
