Birmingham City will receive a windfall in excess of £10million when Jude Bellingham’s transfer to Real Madrid goes through.
Borussia Dortmund announced on Wednesday that they had agreed a deal with Real to sell the England midfielder. They will receive an initial fee of €103m (£88m), with a further €30m (£25m) due in potential add-ons.
He is expected to undergo a medical in the coming days and the move will land the St Andrew’s club with an eight-figure windfall. Incoming owners, Knighthead Capital, are understood to have ring-fenced the cash as part of their takeover deal with outgoing owners, Birmingham Sports’ Holdings Ltd.
The exact percentage sell-on clause has not been established but, according to inside sources, Blues were expecting to bank around £11m if the midfielder moved on for the figure that Dortmund were expecting.
In total, Blues will have banked £35m from the initial sale and sell-on of their ex-academy product. It will also help the club claw back some of its hefty monthly losses and be used to off-set its deficit with respect to the profit and sustainability issues that continue to dog the club.
Bellingham came through the Birmingham academy and made 44 appearances for his boyhood club before being sold to Dortmund in July 2020 when he was just 17. The Blues earned £25m for that initial transfer and are now about to cash in once again on the 19-year-old, who has already won 24 caps for England.
Knighthead Capital plan on re-developing the St Andrew’s site as social housing and could build a new stadium on a 40-acre piece of derelict land that was formerly used as a go-karting track at Birmingham Wheels.
The Bellingham transfer money will therefore come as a timely boost for the club, who finished 17th in the Championship this season. That was their best finish since 2016, following a period of turmoil and uncertainty off the pitch.
As previously reported by Mirror Football, Bellingham has been offered a six-year contract by Real. He is expected to start his career in Madrid on a weekly wage that falls well short of the Spanish club’s highest-paid players, but will increase in 2025 and 2026.
He is expected to play alongside veteran Luka Modric and Toni Kroos, who have been offered new contracts by Real. He will join the next generation of Real midfielders with Aurelien Tchouaméni, Fede Valverde and Eduardo Camavinga.
Bellingham was courted by Liverpool, but they backed out of the race in April due to the numbers involved. “My answer now is not about Jude Bellingham. I never understood why we constantly talk about things we theoretically cannot have. We cannot have six players in the summer for £100m [each], for example. That’s clear,” Klopp said.
"You have to realise what you can do and then you have to work with that. How much money do we have available? Then we work with that. That’s the job you have to do.
“We are not children. You ask a five-year-old what they want for Christmas and they tell you, ‘I want a Ferrari.’ You wouldn’t say ‘That’s a good idea’. You would say, ‘No, it’s too expensive and you cannot drive it’.”
