With force into the future (nd-aktuell.de)

At least in the morning hours it is already autumnally fresh in the Frankfurt city forest. Which is why Armel Bella-Kotchap decided to pull the black sleeves of his chic wine-red training jacket down to his fingertips. The newcomer did his first warm-up laps with the German national team, where he immediately made contact with Antonio Rüdiger. The star defender who now plays for Real Madrid and is scheduled to head up defense for the DFB selection for the World Cup in Qatar from mid-November. There are quite a few who already see “a second Rüdiger” in Bella Kotchap.

The 20-year-old from FC Southampton, who was actually planned for the U21 national team by the German Football Association (DFB), was completely taken aback when national coach Hansi Flick called him recently. Like so many newcomers, he also tells the episode that he didn’t even know the phone number – he still accepted both the call and the invitation to the squad for the Nations League duels against Hungary this Friday (8.45 p.m. / ZDF) and against England in London (Monday 8.45 p.m. / RTL). “I was surprised, but also very happy about it,” said the novice upon arrival at the team hotel in Gravenbruch on the outskirts of Frankfurt am Main.

Bella-Kotchap has long known that his current club coach, Ralph Hasenhüttl, acted as a direct advocate for Flick. “Of all my players, he has shown the most consistent performance so far,” reported the Austrian, who did not advise the national coach against the appointment after Flick’s assistant coach Danny Röhl had gained a strong impression of the resolute central defender on a flying visit to the “Saints”. Since the second day of the Premier League, Bella-Kotchap has not missed a possible minute of the game there.

The fact that the surprise guest, who moved from VfL Bochum to the island in the summer for eleven million euros, has a lot to offer the DFB, above all power and self-confidence, was already apparent during the first training session on the association campus. The football-loving association employees were amazed at how this massive defender with his voluminous thighs abruptly slowed down the nimble Leipzig striker Timo Werner with a tackle that icons like Karlheinz Förster or Jürgen Kohler could not have done better. But the 1.90 meter man can also handle the ball well if he concentrates.

“He has developed well,” said Flick about the appointment of the talent, who only has 22 Bundesliga games and six Premier League games in his CV. Other experienced defenders such as Jonathan Tah (Bayer Leverkusen) or Mats Hummels (Borussia Dortmund) were left out, their chances of participating in the World Cup are obviously dwindling. Rather, there are indications that Flick is relying on Rüdiger on Niklas Süle, Nico Schlotterbeck and Matthias Ginter as central defenders for Qatar. He probably doesn’t need Bella Kotchap (yet) either, because Thilo Kehrer could also help out in these positions. At the latest, however, with a view to the home European Championship in 2024, the future could then belong to professionals like the German-Cameroonian Bella-Kotchap, who was born in Paris and grew up in Germany, whose father Cyrille Bella once played 131 second division games for Rot Weiss Ahlen, where his son also played started kicking.

In 2017, Bella-Kotchap came to VfL Bochum’s “talent work” as a B youth, where his former youth coach Alex Richter still remembers a boy who was already outstanding on the ball, but physical deficits were obvious: “We had to do a lot work on stability, he was still something of a giant baby back then.” Hasenhüttl also recently identified a need for improvement, as Southampton’s team manager told the specialist magazine “Kicker”: “He had a strong upper body, a strong lower body. In between there was nothing. We got him on track with a program.« The result can now be seen on the training ground on Schwarzwaldstraße in Frankfurt’s Niederrad district, when a model athlete does his morning laps.