Birmingham chief would love Jude Bellingham to ‘come home’ and grace new stadium

Birmingham chairman Tom Wagner says the club’s proposed new stadium will provide a “great coming home story” for Jude Bellingham.

Blues unveiled plans for their impressive new £1.2billion 62,000-seater ground on Thursday and Bellingham was involved in the promotional visit.

The 22-year-old Real Madrid star began his career at St Andrew’s and Wagner says the club’s new home will provide a fitting platform.

The American said: “I think Jude is the greatest player on the planet today, and I think his potential is not even close…we haven’t seen anywhere near his full potential yet, not just as a player on the pitch, but also what he can do for a community, what he can do as a leader.

“And so if we can provide him a platform to achieve his full potential, well then that’s a great story.

“It’s a great coming home story, it’s a great Birmingham story. It’s a great England story. So….yeah.”

The proposed new stadium is located in Bordesley Green and is planned to be built in time for the 2030/31 season. It will have a retractable roof and changeable pitch, allowing it to host NFL games and concerts.

It will be called the ‘Powerhouse Stadium’ but will also have naming rights.

The surrounding area will include a new training centre, a new smaller stadium for Blues’ women’s team, affordable housing and a hotel.

Wagner admits Birmingham look like “modest lunatics” by announcing such grand plans while they are in the Championship, but says the ambition is indicative of the future, not their past.

Faced with questions about how they are going to fill a 62,000-seater stadium with a current average attendance of less than 30,000, the American businessman was bullish.

“We look, I think, like modest lunatics sitting in the Championship saying we’re going to do this,” he said.

“In our cup final at Wembley (Football League Trophy) last season we sold 50,000 tickets, and when the phone lines closed, we had 26,000 people waiting to purchase a ticket.

“And so I think that illustrates that the fan base is sufficiently large enough to fill the stadium.

“But we’ve always been very much of a mind to build for the future, not the past, and build where we’re going, not where we’ve been. And I think that’s what this reflects.”

Wagner said the new stadium will be “maybe the most environmentally sound stadium that will ever be built” and will be a multi-purpose venue in the city centre.

“This is going to be able to host not just football, but like every event under the sun, from the world’s biggest touring concerts to boxing matches to the NFL.

“We would love to compete for the right to host NFL events when that next opens up, we would love to compete to host international football, global football competitions of all sorts, men and women.

“It’s absolutely up there with with the modern stadiums in the UK and the world.”