Jobe Bellingham Dortmund shirt number, Sunderland star follows Lewandowski and Ousmane Dembele

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Jude Bellingham is not the only Borussia Dortmund sensation departing Sunderland star Jobe Bellingham will follow in the black and yellow footsteps of at the Bundesliga giants.

Earlier this week, EFL Analysis revealed that Dortmund had fought off a host of Premier League clubs, not to mention German rivals Eintracht Frankfurt and RB Leipzig, to secure the services of the Black Cats midfielder.

Jobe Bellingham could become Sunderland’s biggest-ever sale, too.

The 1997 Champions League winners are expected to part with a fee which could go beyond the £30 million Everton paid to bring Jordan Pickford to Goodison Park.

Now, the risks of following in the footsteps of his older, hugely-successful brother are pretty obvious.

As former Sunderland striker Darren Bent puts it, albeit while arguing that Borussia Dortmund may be the ‘perfect club’ for the England Under-21 international, comparing Jobe Bellingham to his Real Madrid superstar sibling strays into ‘unfair’ territory.

Yet, as Jobe takes a similar path to Jude on his own journey towards footballing prominence, those are comparisons the 19-year-old Birmingham City graduate will find impossible to escape while honing his considerable talents with Die Schwarzgelben.

Sunderland’s Jobe Bellingham could get Borussia Dortmund’s number seven shirt

According to Sky Germany, the Dortmund bosses are planning to hand Jobe Bellingham the number seven shirt.

While Jude donned the number 22 jersey before completing his £85 million move to the Santiago Bernabeu, Jobe will join some of the finest talents in Dortmund’s recent history with the seven adorning the back of his bumblebee-coloured kit.

Giovanni Reyna is the current owner of the shirt Jobe looks destined to inherit on the banks of the Ruhr. The Sunderland-born former Nottingham Forest loanee who, due to an incessant series of injuries, heads into the summer with his future very much uncertain.

Before Reyna came Jadon Sancho. Considering his high-profile struggles at Manchester United and Chelsea, it is easy to forget that, not so long ago, Sancho was viewed as perhaps the most exciting young forward in the whole of Europe while racking up the goals and assists in Germany.

The late-blooming brilliance of Ousmane Dembele – another former Dortmund number seven – should act as an inspiration to the stalling Sancho.

Dembele burned bright but brief in the Bundesliga. He became the second-most expensive footballer in history when Barcelona parted with a fee rising to £135 million in 2018.

After an injury-hit few years in which his vast potential looked destined to go unfulfilled, Dembele last week did what Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe never did by conquering the continent in the blue and red of Paris Saint-Germain.

Darren Bent backs Bellingham to shine as he follows Robert Lewandowski

Other feted wearers of the number seven shirt include Robert Lewandowski, who later moved to a more suitable number nine. And former Japanese playmaker Shinji Kagawa, a member of Jurgen Klopp’s iconic double-winning Dortmund team.

“I like him. It’s always unfair to compare. His brother is one of the best players on the planet,” says Bent, who scored 32 of his 106 Premier League goals for Sunderland between 2009 and 2011. “[So moving to Dortmund] almost makes sense but it doesn’t [at the same time].

“The reason why I said it doesn’t is that you’ve been promoted with Sunderland. You are going to be playing in one of the best leagues in the world, if not the best. You’re in the Premier League.

“But then, on the flip-side, the reason why I say it’s probably the right thing is you look at the path his brother has taken. Your brother has done it right. This sounds nuts; Birmingham City, Dortmund, Real Madrid.

“Dortmund probably know the family really, really well,” Bent adds of a player snapped up by Sunderland for a cool £3 million when he was only 17 years of age. “They have probably been onto the parents for a long time.

“It feels like the perfect move.

“What I do like about it is that we are seeing young, English players looking beyond the Premier League. [Jobe may be thinking] ‘If I go out in Europe and experience different cultures and do well, there is always time to come back [to England]’.

“For me, it’s the perfect club.”