FAREWELL TO CITY’S GREATEST
TRIBUTES: IAN LADYMAN AND MICAH RICHARDS
WHATEVER Manchester City do or do not achieve over the course of the next five months, this season will always now be remembered. Sadly it was the one during which they lost one of their own, perhaps even the greatest they ever had.
Colin Bell. For years, long before his beloved club grew rich, Bell was City’s football royalty. A midfielder so gifted, he was acclaimed by all of those who really mattered. Sir Tom Finney said he was as good a player as he had ever seen. George Best described him as ‘ brilliant’. At City, they just loved him.
Just a year or so ago, Bell gave a rare interview to this newspaper in which he talked about his journey down to a recent FA Cup final against Watford at Wembley.
As he returned to his official transport after a toilet break, Bell sensed a presence behind him. The best players always did.
‘I turned round and there were about 20 people clapping and singing my old terrace song,’ he said quietly.
‘ Did I blush? Deary me. Red as a beetroot. It’s embarrassing.
‘I’m a simple person, a quiet person, and things like that… they watched me go to the toilet, then came back and clapped me.
‘How many years down the line is that now?’
Bell — who died yesterday at the age of 74 — was held in that kind of reverence. His presence outside the Etihad Stadium — where a stand is named after him — on a matchday would cause fathers to stop and explain his story to their sons and daughters.
City have seen some big names come and go over the last decade but few like the tall, slender fellow who once eased around a football pitch as though everybody else was really only there by his invitation.
Yes, Bell was that kind of footballer. A natural who played almost 400 league games for City and 48 times for England. And all that before a knee injury suffered in a Manchester derby at the age of only 29 brought it all to an end.
Born in County Durham, Bell began his career at Bury in the early 1960s after being rejected by Newcastle and Arsenal following trials. Joe Mercer took him to City for £45,000 in the March of 1966,a fee that Bell himself felt was ‘a little high for a 20-year- old’. If anybody else thought that then they didn’t for long.
City were promoted from the second tier at the end of that season and, two years later, they became English league champions for only the second time in their history. Bell scored 14 league goals that season as part of a wonderful side featuring rare talents such as Mike Summerbee, Francis Lee and Neil Young. Summerbee, Lee and Bell were to become a renowned and feared trio. Long considered the club’s finest attacking threesome of all time, that is a view now clouded by a period that has seen City boast such incredible forward players such as Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Kevin de Bruyne. But that debate is for another day and would likely be a long and inconclusive one. What is not in doubt is the breadth and depth of Bell’s skills. A goalscorer, he was also a fine passer of the ball, a player with the kind of intuition and vision that could sense opportunities and problems coming at a distance. He played for City at exactly the right time. He was right for them and Maine Road afforded him a fitting stage. The club were not to win the title again but did lift the FA Cup in 1969 and the League Cup and European Cup-Winners’ Cup a year later. At this stage Bell was still only 26, not even in his prime. The injury that was to signal the beginning of the end came in a challenge with United defender Martin Buchan in 1975.
By that time, Bell had been to the 1970 World Cup with England and was an established member of a team now managed by Don Revie and looking to move forwards with players such as Bell, Kevin Keegan, Malcolm Macdonald and Mick Channon. Bell was to score nine goals for his country in all.
After a two-year period of recovery, Bell’s return to the City team for a game against Newcastle on Boxing Day 1977 was emotionallycharged and followed by another 26 league games that year. But he was not the same player, something he accepted in later life.
‘I will always look back and think of the extra things I could have achieved,’ said Bell.
‘There may have been more medals and caps. I don’t know.’
Bell’s injury was suffered in a League Cup semi-final game that they won. Tonight the two Manchester teams meet at the same stage of the same competition. City’s players will walk from the tunnel wearing the No 8 shirt Bell carried with such inimitable grace.
Once again we will rue an empty stadium. The King of the Kippax was what they called Colin Bell. They were not wrong.
City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said in a statement: ‘ Colin Bell will always be remembered as one of Manchester City’s greatest players.’