England and Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham has bought a 1.2 per cent stake in the cricket team Birmingham Phoenix.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old says he was keen to \u201cgive something back to the city\u201d where he spent his childhood years as a footballer and will now help promote the sport in the area.<\/p>\n
Last year, the U.S. firm, Knighthead Capital Management, who own Bellingham\u2019s former club, Birmingham City, bought 49 per cent of the Phoenix when the England and Wales Cricket Board auctioned off stakes in eight teams attached to the Hundred franchise \u2014 a UK-based professional league that uses the 100-ball format.<\/p>\n
Bellingham\u2019s minority investment, which is understood to be worth around \u00a3800,000 ($1.1million; \u20ac919,690), means Warwickshire County Cricket Club maintains majority control with 50.4 per cent and Knighthead holding 48.4 per cent.<\/p>\n
The Champions League winner is a lifelong cricket fan and was born in Stourbridge, then educated at the private Priory School in Edgbaston, less than a mile from the cricket ground.<\/p>\n
He says: \u201cI love Birmingham. I\u2019m very grateful for what the whole city of Birmingham has done for me. I love cricket as well so when I got the opportunity to get involved I didn\u2019t really think twice about it, so I\u2019m so happy to be on board.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I owe the city something. Right now it\u2019s difficult with how busy I am with football, but if there\u2019s a way in which I can help then I want to and this feels like a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bellingham will help out with community projects and is expected to give Phoenix the type of boost that legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady has provided to Birmingham City.<\/p>\n
He says he wants to encourage kids within the West Midlands to play more sports, adding: \u201cI was fortunate growing up I had the option of playing cricket and playing football, but some kids don\u2019t have that opportunity. It\u2019s important that if I can get involved in something like this to shine a light on an opportunity for kids, then even better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stuart Cain, Chief Executive of Birmingham Phoenix, says: \u201cJude understands high performance sport, but more importantly as someone who grew up in the West Midlands and played the sport in his local streets, he understands the importance of sport and how it can play a positive role in young people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England and Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham has bought a 1.2 per cent stake in the cricket team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6054,6055,82,83],"class_list":["post-9505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-birmingham-city","tag-cricket","tag-madrid","tag-real-madrid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}