As the second half of the 2025/26 Bundesliga campaign prepares to begin, it looks like Borussia Dortmund midfielder Jobe Bellingham will be in line for his first start of the new calendar year. The 20-year-old’s disappointing 2025 year ended with a two-match ban. After Bellingham served the second match of his suspension, the England Under-21 international came off the bench in Wednesday’s league win over Werder Bremen and recorded an assist in Serhou Guirassy’s 3-0 win.
Injuries and transfers open the door for Bellingham
BVB coach Niko Kovac confirmed in his pre-match press conference on Friday that Austrian midfielder Marcel Sabitzer (who has started both Dortmund 2026 matches since play resumed) will not be available against St. Pauli this weekend. The fact that another of Bellingham’s midfield competitors, Pascal Groß, opted to leave the club earlier this month leaves Bellingham as the best option to play alongside fellow former England youth international Felix Nmecha.
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St. Pauli is an opponent Bellingham would rather forget
In the “Rück-Runde” Bundesliga, as always, the clubs play each other in exactly the same order as at the beginning of the season. This translates into a rematch against St. Pauli at the Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund. Bellingham and the rest of his clubmates would prefer to forget the rather embarrassing way in which the team squandered a two-goal lead at the last minute against Hamburg. Kiezkicker at the Millerntor.
In the case of Bellingham, the August 2025 match was also doubly embarrassing due to an incident in which his father, Mark, approached the BVB coaching and management team over the way Kovac was using his son tactically. Although Dortmund attempted to smooth over the incident, the confrontation clearly affected Bellingham’s new Bundesliga club’s opinion of him.
Kovac’s last words about Jobe Bellingham
“In recent months he has made great progress,“Kovac said of Bellingham on Friday.”He will continue to add solid minutes. I am very satisfied with it and happy that it is ours.“
GGFN | Peter Weiss