Colin Bell already had a premonition that this international break was going to be tough. In a way, that was exactly the point. The South Korean national team coach has seen his side lose all three of their games in England in a warm-up tournament for the summer World Cup in recent weeks. However, the opponents in the Arnold Clark Cup were Belgium, Italy and England and it was already clear in advance that South Korea would go into each of these games as the clear outsider. With the exception of three players, all players in the South Korean national team are at home in the domestic WK league. The fact that Bell also had to do without a few key players made the task in the three games all the more difficult.
Still, the Arnold Clark Cup was a good test for Bell and South Korea’s women’s team given the challenges that still lie ahead this year. In order to be able to survive in a preliminary round group with Germany at the World Cup in July and August, you have to compete with the best nations in the world. Because that’s something Bell says most of his players don’t get to do every week. “There are big difficulties in terms of the intensity of the football [in der WK-Liga] concerns,” he told DW. “In South Korea, the league is too slow and the intensity isn’t high enough. When the players come to the national team, we train very differently. We play at a high level and the players are capable of doing that. It frustrates me a little to see how they can play and then see how they play in the league. Unfortunately, the difference is just too big.”
South Korea lost all three games against strong competition at the Arnold Clark Cup
Fixing that lack of intensity was Bell’s first approach when he took over South Korea after the 2019 World Cup. After two years coaching Ireland’s women’s national team and a brief stint as assistant coach at English club Huddersfield Town, Bell was looking for a new challenge. The Englishman, who won the Champions League with then 1. FFC Frankfurt in 2015, was looking for an opportunity to build a team based on his vision. According to Bell, these ideas have been shaped by 30 years as a coach and player in Germany.
“Made in Germany”
“The German influence on the way I work and think about football has had a huge impact on me,” he says. “It’s this German mentality, going onto the pitch expecting to win without having to play well, but still to win. For me, that’s a kind of positive arrogance that I like very much. I have that attitude respected and now transfer it to all my teams, whether in Germany or Norway, in Ireland or now in South Korea. I try to instill that belief.”
Bell, who can now mostly communicate with his players in Korean, has identified the lack of international experience as a particular weakness. Apart from star players like Ji So-yun, who won several titles with Chelsea in eight years, that experience is almost non-existent. The 61-year-old Englishman therefore believes moving abroad could be beneficial for some of his players.
1. FFC Frankfurt was the last German team to win the Champions League title
“It’s always a question of the individual player what they want, where they want to go and how they want to develop their career. South Korea is a great place to live, so I can’t blame anyone for wanting to stay there,” says Bell. “But for some of them it would certainly be good to gain experience abroad. It would be an adventure and a career change to play regularly with high intensity in leagues where there is real competition and where you can be relegated, for example. In South Korea there’s no real pressure. If you finish last, you end up last, but you’re still playing in the league next season.”
South Korean football is lagging behind
So-hyun made similar comments in an interview with the soccer website last year goal: “To improve yourself, I recommend [südkoreanischen Spielerinnen]to go to European leagues. I’m not saying Asian players can’t play football well, but I’m saying about their skill and physical fitness [Fähigkeiten] To improve, I think it’s much better to play abroad and gain experience there.”
That’s exactly what Bell did as a player: the defender was at Leicester City from 1977 to 1982 but didn’t make the senior squad. So he went to Germany, where he played in the upper amateur level for five years. In 1987 he switched to FSV Mainz 05 in the 2nd Bundesliga and still turned professional. After his playing career, Bell coached a number of women’s and men’s teams in Germany, with particular success for 1. FFC Frankfurt.
At the EM 2022, many of the young German players knew how to convince
So the 61-year-old knows only too well what to expect when his side meet Germany in Group H in Brisbane, Australia on 3 August. The squad of national coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg is peppered with top players and young talents. However, Bell thinks the women’s Bundesliga has “fallen a bit behind” in recent years. Bell trained some of the current German players during his time in Germany. Back then, he tried to convince Linda Dallmann to be the first player to switch to Frankfurt for a transfer fee. He has also accompanied many players of the younger generation from an early age.
Up-and-coming talents in the German team
“I’ve always been a big fan of Linda, but also of Lina Magull,” he says. “I remember watching her play for the Germany U-15 team, as does Lea Schüller. And then there’s Giulia Gwinn, who is unfortunately injured at the moment. So you have a new group of younger players who are really improved and did very well at the European Championships last year. The final could have gone either way.”
So could the England coach’s proximity to his former homeland work to South Korea’s advantage? “I think I can deal with them more easily and quickly than with the other opponents,” says Bell about the German team. “But of course it’s going to be a big task because I know how good they are. It’s an interesting group. But our focus is more on Colombia and Morocco because if we beat both then we’re through to the next round.”
Should Bell achieve that goal, it would be only the second time South Korea have progressed through the group stage of a World Cup. And should his team actually win against the Colombians and Moroccans at the start, the result in the final group game against the DFB women would ultimately not matter for progress – but for Bell it is anything but a meaningless game one way or another.
This text has been adapted from English