Albert Henry Bell
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Place of birth | England | ||||||||||||||||
| Place of death | Unknown | ||||||||||||||||
| Position(s) | Defender | ||||||||||||||||
| Senior career* | |||||||||||||||||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) | ||||||||||||||
| 1906–1914 | Worthing | ||||||||||||||||
| International career | |||||||||||||||||
| 1908–1914 | Surrey County FA | +2 | (0) | ||||||||||||||
| 1908 | Great Britain | 0 | (0) | ||||||||||||||
| 1909–1910 | England Amateurs | 5 | (0) | ||||||||||||||
Medal record
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| *Club domestic league appearances and goals | |||||||||||||||||
Albert Henry Bell was an English amateur footballer who played as a right-back for Worthing and England Amateurs in the early 20th century. He was a member of British squad that participated in the football tournament of the 1908 Summer Olympics, but he did not play in any matches.[1] He later served as president of Worthing and as a vice-president of the Surrey County FA.[1]
Career
During the early stages of his career, which was all spent playing as an amateur right-back at non-League club Worthing, Bell was unable to earn a single cap for England Amateurs due to the presence of Birmingham's Watty Corbett, one of England's best right-backs who was at the peak of his career at the time.[1]
Having represented the Surrey county in an international trial match at Chelsea in February 1908, Bell was selected as a member of Great Britain's 18-man squad that participated in the football tournament of the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, but Corbett once again blocked him from playing in any matches as the team won gold.[1][2]
In the 1909 international trial at Birmingham, Bell captained the South against the North,[1][3] and remained an unused substitute against Germany in March 1909.[1] The following month, on 12 April, he took advantage of Corbett's absence to finally make his international debut for England Amateurs, in a friendly match against the Netherlands, keeping a clean-sheet in a 4–0 win.[1][4] Having earned four of his five international caps within 40 days, from 12 April until 22 May 1909, he then had to wait for nearly a year for his fifth cap in a 2–2 draw with Belgium on 26 March 1910.[1][4] After his match against France on 22 May, which ended in a resounding 11–0 victory, the journalists of the French newspaper L'Auto (the forerunner of L'Équipe) stated that "Bell got caught out a couple of times, but was still a dangerous back".[5][6]
On 1 November 1913, Bell played for the so-called English Wanderers in a friendly against Lions des Flandres, a regional scratch team representing Northern France, helping his side to a 1–4 win.[7] He captained the Surrey county side for seven seasons, from 1908 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "Albert Bell". Olympedia. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
- ^ "IV. Olympiad London 1908 Football Tournament". RSSSF. 15 June 2022. Archived from the original on 11 January 2023. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
- ^ "The Coming International Games". The Observer. 31 January 1909. p. 10. Retrieved 19 May 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b "England Matches - The Amateurs 1906-1939". englandfootballonline.com. Archived from the original on 28 March 2022. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
- ^ "L'Angleterre (F.A) bat la France (C.F.I.)" [England (FA) beats France (CFI)]. gallica.bnf.fr (in French). L'Auto. 23 May 1909. p. 5. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
- ^ "France contre Angleterre" [France against England]. gallica.bnf.fr (in French). La Presse. 22 May 1909. p. 3. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
- ^ "1913–14 Saison de football" [1913–14 football season] (PDF). footnostalgie.free.fr (in French). pp. 38–42. Retrieved 19 May 2025.