No more jack of all trades - Why Bellingham will be more attacking than ever for Dortmund this season

The England international has played a number of roles for the Westfalen club. Now he needs to establish himself as a bona fide No.10 in Edin Terzic's side.

As was often the case on the pitch when he was a marauding midfielder for Bayern Munich or Chelsea, Michael Ballack doesn’t tend to dance around the task at hand. And when he was recently asked about Borussia Dortmund’s chances of challenging his former club in the Bundesliga this season, the pundit responded with the kind of blunt ferocity that we have come to expect from a man that spent much of his childhood in East Germany, tossed out of bed at 6am most mornings to begin four hours of training before his peers had even begun their day. 

“Their relationship between ambition - to become champions - and mentality - to show it every week - is not right," stated the former midfielder in an interview with Kicker. "They tend to bring in young players who are not yet ready, especially in terms of personality development.” Dortmund fans would have heard this argument before. Countless times, in fact. But where Ballack seemed certain to go on a barrage of insults, he stopped to offer a brief respite and, perhaps, some hope for the Westfalen faithful. Upon taking a pause, the pundit added: “I'll leave Bellingham out of this.”

Whether or not Ballack is correct in his analysis of Dortmund’s assembled squad for the new season, his undoubted praise for the England international was remarkably telling. Dortmund didn’t have the players necessary to cause Bayern trouble over the course of the coming season, until they suddenly did. And in Bellingham they may well have a player that could level the playing field.