Mats Hummels: 10 things on the former Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich World Cup-winning centre-back
A six-time Bundesliga champion, a 2014 FIFA World Cup winner, a 2013 and 2024 UEFA Champions League finalist and a goalscorer in 16 consecutive top-flight campaigns, former Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich defender Mats Hummels is one of German football's golden boys.
While Hummels' life story and curriculum vitae are as familiar as the sight of one of his famed outside-of-the-boot passes, bundesliga.com has collated 10 lesser-known facts about the centre-back-cum-fashion-model.
1) Mummy's boy
Had Hummels not been a footballer, it is safe to say he would have been a football writer or broadcaster. The defender's mother, Ulla Holthoff, has been a sports journalist for over four decades and, in 1990, became the first woman to commentate a live football match on German TV when working for national broadcaster ZDF.
She has since presented the lead sports show on Bavarian television, but recalled how she used to take a young Mats to work with her: "For some shows he'd sit in the TV wagon at the back and was allowed to press the button for the graphics to appear on the screen," she said. "When he's in a stadium nowadays, it's guaranteed there'll be at least one journalist telling him: 'I know you, you used to be so small!'"
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