- Date Of Birth: 26 February 1946
- Date Of Death: 5 January 2021
- Occupation: Footballer
- City: Hesleden
- State: England
Colin Bell MBE (26 February 1946 – 5 January 2021) was an English professional footballer who played as a midfielder. Best known for his thirteen-year spell at Manchester City, he is regarded as one of the club’s finest-ever players, and was part of the Bell–Lee–Summerbee trio in the late 1960s and 1970s. Bell made forty-eight appearances for the England national football team; he was an unused squad member at UEFA Euro 1968 and played in three matches at the 1970 FIFA World Cup.
During his playing career, he was nicknamed “The King of the Kippax” (after Maine Road’s Kippax Street terraced stand renowned for its singing) and Nijinsky (after the famous racehorse, due to his renowned stamina). In 2004, the West Stand of City of Manchester Stadium was later named in his honour.
Bell subsequently became a coach for the youth and reserve teams of Manchester City, as well as one of its club ambassadors. He was awarded an MBE in 2004 for services to the community.
Bell was diagnosed with bowel cancer shortly after his autobiography, Reluctant Hero, was released in 2005. He detailed how his mother died from that same disease and was encouraged to have it examined himself. He was operated on within three weeks of the diagnosis. He died on 5 January 2021 at the age of 74. He suffered from a short illness in the time leading up to his death. – Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License from Wikipedia.
