Our England international forward shares a passion for basketball with a group of players in the Blues dressing room, watching matches when he can and also playing video games based on the sport. He has even been compared to one of Miami Heat’s star forwards!

Films and TV series also feature prominently in the 20-year-old’s downtime, as he explains in this exclusive chat…

‘I’m a basketball fan and I try to watch whenever I can,’ said Callum. ‘It’s very late sometimes for us in England but I like to watch the games or the highlights the next day and see how things are going over there.

‘I follow it a lot. If a game is on early in England, I’ll try to watch it and see what’s going on. It’s a fun sport, everyone looks like they enjoy it and it has good vibes and energy so it’s nice to watch. It’s a completely different sport to us so it’s good to follow.’

‘They call me Jimmy Butler!’

‘There’s loads of us who follow it, not just me. Obviously we have Christian, who is from America so he watches it as well, and there’s Andreas [Christensen] as well.

‘I see Willy Caballero always talking about it and the boys even call me Jimmy Butler [a forward with Miami Heat]. It’s nice and hopefully we can get over there and watch a game together soon.’

Gaming connections

‘I play NBA on the PlayStation, as well as Call of Duty and FIFA. I like to mix it up and change rather than stay on one specific game. When I’m at home, I get on my phone, video call my friends and if they’re playing a certain game, we’ll just jump on and play together.

‘I haven’t been able to see them much for a long time now so it’s a good way to interact and see how they’re doing. It’s not seeing them but it’s still getting to play with them on the game and doing something fun even though we’re not together.

‘As footballers, we need to go home and recover. We train and work hard every day so it’s nice to just relax and settle down.’

New series pending

‘I like to chill with Netflix, just watch some new movies that have come out and unwind. I do a lot of recovery at home with the Game Ready [compression therapy boot] so I just put a movie on while I’m doing that.

‘I recently watched a movie called ‘Us’ and there’s a new film called ‘Run’, which was crazy to watch. It was actually pretty intense and you really felt for the girl involved with her mum. Those are the movies that I enjoy but usually I just go on Netflix and see what’s trending.

‘I’m still waiting for the new series of Money Heist and Lupin to come out. Those are the two I’m really waiting for right now because I really enjoyed watching them - hopefully they’ll be out soon.’

Changing habits

‘I haven’t watched proper TV in a while. Unless there’s a match on, I don’t really watch TV much at all. It’s more movies or PlayStation.

‘If it’s not that, I’ll be on FaceTime on my phone or literally just chilling. It’s nice to be able to come home and just unwind.’