Jobe Bellingham in line for first Bundesliga start of 2026 | OneFootball

As the second half of the 2025/26 Bundesliga campaign prepares to get rolling, it appears as if Borussia Dortmund midfielder Jobe Bellingham will be in line for his first start of the new calendar year. The 20-year-old’s highly disappointing 2025 ended with a two-match-ban. After Bellingham served the second game of his suspension, the England U21 international did come off the bench in Wednesday’s league victory over Werder Bremen and registered an assist on Serhou Guirassy’s 3-0. 

Injuries and transfers open the door for Bellingham

BVB head coach Niko Kovac confirmed at his Friday pre-match press conference that Austrian midfielder Marcel Sabitzer (who has started both Dortmund 2026 fixtures since play resumed) will be unavailable against St. Pauli this weekend. The fact that another one of Bellingham’s midfield competitors, Pascal Groß, opted to leave the club earlier this month leaves Bellingham the best option to serve alongside his fellow former England youth international Felix Nmecha.

St. Pauli is an opponent Bellingham would prefer to forget

The Bundesliga “Rück-Runde”, as always, sees the clubs play one another in precisely the same order as they did at the beginning of the season. This translates to a re-match against St. Pauli at Dortmund’s Signal Iduna Park. Bellingham and the rest of his club teammates would prefer to forget the rather embarrassing manner in which the team blew a late two-goal-lead against Hamburg’s Kiezkicker at the Millerntor.

In Bellingham’s case, the August 2025 fixture also happened to be doubly embarrassing due to an incident in which his father mark accosted the BVB coaching and managerial team about the manner in which Kovac used his son tactically.Though Dortmund attempted to smooth the incident over, the confrontation clearly affected Bellingham’s new Bundesliga club’s opinion of him. 

Kovac’s latest words on Jobe Bellingham

“In these last few months, he’s made great progress,” Kovac said of Bellingham on Friday. “He’ll continue to get solid minutes. I’m very satisfied with him and happy that he’s ours.“

GGFN | Peter Weis