SEND THEM VICTORIOUS

Two English coaches at the 2023 World Cup have had very different career paths. South Korea's Colin Bell and Canada's Bev Priestman explain how Gary Lineker, Jurgen Klopp and Phil Neville brought them to this moment

- Rich Edwards

Regardless of how South Korea do in Australia and New Zealand, Colin Bell, their English manager, already deserves a winners' medal. Our interview takes place via Zoom and his chosen background is a picture of Manchester City's players celebrating their FA Cup triumph at Wembley in 1969, including his namesake. World-class.

Bell's back story and CV are as interesting as any of the coaches at the tournament. Having come through the Leicester youth system alongside Gary Lineker in the late 1970s, Bell made his name in Germany, first as a lower-league player, then as a coach working with, among others, Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp.

"I joined Leicester on schoolboy forms at the age of 14," he explains. "After school, I signed my first contract with them and remained a reserve-team regular until I leftI'm probably one of the most capped reserve team players in the club's history!

"Gary Lineker and I basically grew up together. We played against each other and then played together in youth and reserve teams, too. The last time I saw him was shortly before he moved to Everton.

"I was back from Germany for Christmas and we bumped into each other on a night out," adds Bell, discreetly obeying the omerta of a footballers' Christmas do in the 1980s.

Bell eventually left the Foxes in 1982 and, following a brief spell with non-league side Nuneaton Borough, did what few footballers from English shores were preferring, moving overseas to a country he would call home for the next 34 years.

"An agent in Germany got a free transfer list from the PFA," continues Bell. "A couple of years earlier, he'd met a young guy called David Bennett from Leeds and taken him to the third division in Germany. David had stayed friends with this agent, who was actually the same person that discovered Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and moved him to Bayern Munich.