‘No-one laughing now!’ - Former Jude Bellingham team-mate reacts to ‘dramatic’ retirement of No.22 at Birmingham & England star’s snubbing of Sir Alex Ferguson & Eric Cantona at Man Utd

The Blues raised plenty of eyebrows when revealing that nobody would be taking the squad number that Bellingham left behind when completing his big-money transfer to Borussia Dortmund in 2020. The talented midfielder was just 17 at the time and had made only 44 appearances for the West Midlands outfit.

Camp was a club colleague of Bellingham at St Andrew’s and has told The Telegraph of seeing a teenage wonderkid given the same treatment as legends such as Bobby Moore and Johan Cruyff: “I laughed as well! I thought it was a bit dramatic. But no-one is laughing now.”

Bellingham headed for Germany have turned down an approach from Premier League giants Manchester United, with Camp adding on a bid from the Red Devils that saw them draft Sir Alex Ferguson, Eric Cantona and Bryan Robson into talks: “He told one or two of us what happened. They rolled out all the big guns. Having the maturity to then choose Dortmund, knowing how they had developed players, just showed how aware of his own development he was. He had turned down Manchester United and that was a big thing to do but he knew where he needed to be. You could see with that choice that he would develop and he would go onto something after that. I remember speaking to Kevin Thelwell when he was director of football at Wolves and he said ‘we’d take him in a heartbeat but he can’t get near him’. He said all the top European clubs were lining up and he had the pick of where he wanted to go. Even before he got into the first-team he could have left and had options.”

Bellingham spent three years in Dortmund, with his stock rising to the point that Real Madrid were prepared to part with a €103 million (£87m/$110m) transfer fee in 2023. The 20-year-old has continued to star in Spain, winning La Liga, the Champions League and Golden Boy award during his debut season at Santiago Bernabeu.