Jude Bellingham’s bid for the Golden Boy award could receive a boost from fans of Taylor Swift.
The Real Madrid and England superstar is considered one of the leading contenders for the prize, which is awarded to the best player in Europe under the age of 21.
Past winners of the Golden Boy award include football icons like Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney, Cesc Fabregas, Mario Balotelli, Isco, Paul Pogba, Raheem Sterling, Kylian Mbappe, and Erling Haaland.
For the past two years, the award has been claimed by Barcelona players, with midfield talents Pedri and Gavi earning recognition.
Another Cule in Alejandro Balde is in contention this time around but his chances might just be scuppered for not being a fan of Swift.
In an interview with Mundo Deportivo, Balde is quoted as saying, “Do I like Taylor Swift? No, I don’t like her music”.
Spanish journalist Martin Manin claims that the left-back was winning the fan section vote ahead of Bellingham by 13%.
Yet, incredibly, in a seven minute period, an insane amount of votes came in for Bellingham, who has scored five goals in his first four games for Los Blancos.
It comes after a viral tweet encouraging ‘Swifty’ fans to vote for Bellingham and not Balde.
❗Alejandro Balde was leading the race in the fan vote of the Golden Boy 2023. Jude Bellingham had 30k votes.
But suddenly, in just 7 minutes Jude suddenly got almost 100k new votes, when the fan vote in total had around 100k votes in a couple of hours. @martinminan_ pic.twitter.com/gP6ZwCLsnc
— Managing Barça (@ManagingBarca) September 5, 2023
At the time of writing,the Tuttosportvote now says that Bellingham has accrued a staggering 89.1% of more than 3 million votes cast.
Balde, meanwhile, is in second place on a mere 8.4% of votes, with Jamal Musiala following behind on 0.7%.
Bellingham is winning by a landslide and is almost nailed on to win the coveted prize for the first time.
The Birmingham City academy product recently became the first Englishman to win the La Liga Player of the Month award after an electric start to life in Spain.
The former Borussia Dortmund man followed that up by scoring a 95th minute winner against Getafe at the Santiago Bernabeu.