My First World Cup: Colin Bell on travelling the world to reach the pinnacle of football
Despite spending the majority of the last 40 years away from his native Leicester, there are some aspects of travelling that Colin Bell is still getting used to. “You never know how long it is going to take,” he says jovially rather than through frustration. He then offers an unnecessary apology for being a few minutes late for this interview after travelling back to his Ilsan home following a few days in Seoul. “I live about 30 kilometres away from Seoul but it takes a long time because of the traffic. Sometimes you get through it really well and other times it can take two hours.”
Bell has now lived in South Korea for the best part of four years having taken charge of the women’s national team in October 2019. Traffic aside, he only speaks positively about his latest adopted home. “It’s a different world but I’ve settled in very well,” he says. “The people are very friendly and very respectful. This is the place that I feel the happiest that I’ve been. I love Korea, I love living here.”
Whilst South Korea has provided a route to his first-ever World Cup as either a manager or a player at the age of 61, Bell’s has been a life dedicated to football. Let go by Leicester City and told he would never be good enough, he left for Germany to continue playing before embarking on a managerial career that has seen him lead women’s, men’s and youth teams whilst working alongside Jurgen Klopp and winning a Champions League in the process. Yet it was all only made possible by a chance call in 1982.
“An agent asked if I was interested in going over to Germany, so I packed my bags and the next day I was on my way there,” he recalls. “I had a trial, got a two-year contract and basically stayed there until 2016 when I went to Norway.” Whilst the way that Bell tells the story makes it seem as though almost four decades passed in the blink of an eye, an appreciation of what he achieved during his time in Germany should not be rushed.
After enjoying a more than respectable playing career at VFL Hamm and Mainz, a series of coaching jobs ultimately brought him back to Mainz in 2001 to work alongside a man who would go on to become a household name. “I went back as the coach of the under-23’s and Kloppo was the head coach of the first team. We worked together for five years, every day talking about football.” During that time, Mainz twice missed out on promotion to the Bundesliga on the final day of the season. “It made him so strong. That’s why every time I see Liverpool in a crisis or whatever, I always know he will come through. He knows exactly how to deal with those situations.”
Bell was the first Englishman to pass their UEFA Pro License in Germany. Although the German habit of winning helped him collect both the Frauen DFB Pokal and UEFA Women’s Champions League with Frankfurt after embarking upon a career in women’s football in 2011, it is clear from the way he talks that he sees his job as about much more than trophies.
“I had a maths teacher when I was 12 who told me that the chances of me becoming a professional footballer were like one in 1000,” he says. “He calculated that in a lesson. In the end it motivated me even more, but it could have destroyed a little kid’s dream. I have never told a player that they’re not good enough. I might have said they are not up to the level we need at the moment, and this is what you need to do to get to that level, or maybe it is better for you to go to this club where you’re going to get more game time. But I’ve never told anybody ‘You’re not good enough’.”
This dedication to helping his players is evident once more in a story Bell tells about his first experience in the women’s game with Bad Neuenahr. “Almuth Schult was my goalkeeper, she made her debut for Germany when she was at Bad Neuenahr. Leonie Maier also became a national team player. I was very proud of those two girls making the jump to the national team. It showed at that time that you don’t have to be playing for Duisburg or Potsdam or Frankfurt to be a national team player. From the first day I joined I wanted to get to a World Cup, I wanted to be part of a major tournament. That’s why I was so motivated to try and help my players become internationals.”
There is real emotion in the way Bell remembers his time in charge of Ireland between 2017 and 2019. He ultimately left to return to the men’s game and take a coaching job at Huddersfield Town in the Championship. There is regret in Bell’s tone as he speaks about that period of his career, not at lasting just seven weeks at Huddersfield alongside Jan Siewart, moreso at what he left behind in Ireland as the team edged closer to reaching a first-ever major tournament despite ongoing issues related to financial mismanagement under former Irish Football Association CEO John Delaney.
“I loved that time; I loved the players,” he says. “It was a great time to be there. The Irish FA asked me what they needed to do to help me stay and I didn’t talk about money, I just said that I wanted a four-year contract and to have complete control over women’s football; choose the coaches for the underage teams, implement the playing style and principles of play for all of the teams. They were my conditions and if they could go through then I would have definitely rejected the offer from Huddersfield. But at that time the board were not able to make that decision, they were in turmoil. Six weeks later, none of the board were in place anymore, they all had to resign.”
Bell admits that a role as a technical director would appeal to him in the future, and he is not short of ideas to improve football both in South Korea and further afield. Having recently signed a new contract with the Korean Football Assocation to extend his stay until the end of 2024, he is determined to not only achieve on-field success but also shape the football culture of a nation that he feels is yet to fully embrace the women’s game.
“The team has improved,” he says. “We are tactically very flexible, we are faster than we used to be but we still need to get up to scratch because the league here is played at low intensity. The training is high volume but low intensity, they think you need to be on the pitch for two or three hours. Whereas I want them on the pitch for maybe 70 minutes but at 100 per cent, full on and then you get your rest.
“International football is very fast, very physical and very intense. The distance that we cover as a team or individually is probably on par with the majority of the teams in the top 10 of the world rankings. Where we fall short, and it’s down to the training methods, is the intensity of the games, the high-speed runs and sprints.”
He adds: “I think the whole system [in South Korea] needs to be changed and restructured. The clubs have no underage teams, there’s no second team, there’s no second division. We need our young talented players exposed to senior football faster.
“South Korea is a smaller nation in terms of football. We have 1400 registered girls playing soccer. Australia has over 400,000 and Japan has 800,000. That is part of what we need to improve on; to get more girls playing. It’s still a bit of a cultural thing that women’s soccer is looked down on a bit. It’s getting better but we need to do well [at the World Cup] to increase that acceptance.”
Bell’s plans for the future can wait for now though with a World Cup firmly in his sights. His Zoom background is an image of his favourite player, former England and Manchester City hero Colin Bell, holding the FA Cup aloft in 1969. Although Bell vaguely remembers England winning the World Cup in 1966, it is the 1970 tournament in Mexico that he can re-call with greater clarity – and the other Bell is unsurprisingly involved.
Bell, the City legend, replaced Bobby Charlton with England 2-1 up in their quarter-final against West Germany in Leon. They would eventually lose 3-2 after extra time with Bell, an 8-year-old boy at the time, admitting he ”cried all day afterwards”.
“Nobody likes to lose but I always hated losing,” he admits. “I always thought that you had to get on the pitch and give your best, even if you do lose you give 100%. I always thought that was an English trait that you just don’t give up.
“Going to Germany and playing, there was an expectation to win all the time. The Germans more often than not find a way to win and have a certain amount of arrogance and confidence in their own ability. There was something special there that I’ve definitely embraced and taken on board.”
It is no surprise that his focus is therefore on having his team perfectly prepared to try and win their opening Group H fixture against Colombia in Sydney, rather than the intrigue of coming up against his adopted homeland Germany a week later or trying to comprehend where coaching at a World Cup ranks among his career achievements.
“At the moment Colombia is the only focus. I’ve always worked like that, even at club level. When the fixtures would come out, I never knew who the second fixture was against because it didn’t interest me. All I wanted to know was who we started against. When we’ve played Colombia we will deal with Morocco and we’ll come to the German team when the time is right.
“This is the pinnacle; to go to the strongest tournament you can experience in football.”
