Jude Bellingham has hailed Manchester City defender Manuel Akanji in a recent Instagram story.
The centre-back is celebrating his 28th birthday today and has since found himself receiving a birthday message from one of his former Borussia Dortmund teammates.
In a recent Instagram story on his official account, Bellingham uploaded a picture of the duo during their time together at the German club celebrating a goal.
As well as this image, the midfielder wrote his happy birthday message and tagged Akanji in it, in addition to saying the centre-back is ‘some player.’
Bellingham could have followed Akanji to City
City signed the Switzerland international from Dortmund back in September in a deal worth a reported fee of £15m and then saw him go on to make 48 appearances across their treble-winning season.
Bellingham could have ended up following his former teammate to the Etihad Stadium this summer, as City were one of the clubs in the mix to sign the 20-year-old before he ultimately joined Real Madrid last month for a fee of £88.5m.
Despite that, it’s still nice to see the Englishman take the time to wish his former teammate a happy birthday as well as praise him for his playing ability at the same time.
During their time at the German club together, they featured in 71 matches in total across all competitions, racking up 4875 minutes together on the pitch, which shows that Bellingham has a good idea of how good the City defender is.
Moving forward, with both City and Real likely to be aiming to win the Champions League next season, there’s every possibility that the two former Dortmund stars could be facing off against each other.
