From Taupō To Tennessee: Bell’s Ascent To Football’s Global Stage

As Auckland City prepare to face German giants Bayern Munich at the FIFA Club World Cup, one player’s journey to the world stage speaks to a deeper truth of quiet determination, ancestral pride, and the weight of dreams carried on humble shoulders.

At just 21, defender Adam Bell is poised to confront some of the finest footballers on the planet. Serge Gnabry. Jamal Musiala. Names that belong in the rarefied air of European elite. Yet Bell’s immediate reality lies not in celebrity, but in sacrifice.

Just two days after taking the field against Bayern, he will sit a university business exam in a Tennessee hotel room—wedged between match analysis and recovery protocols. Bell’s road to this moment did not begin in a Bundesliga academy or a European youth system.

It began in a car, on Auckland’s suburban streets, driven by his mother Heidi, a primary school teacher at Wesley Primary, who used her limited annual leave to attend her son’s biggest match to date.

“No one in my family really played football,” Bell reflects. “My brothers hated it. But I stuck with it. Mum backed me the whole way.”

He has already exhausted the last of his three paid leave days from Bunnings, used during the Oceania Champions League. Every step since, travel, training, match day, is unpaid. His university studies in commerce are on hold.

There is no lucrative contract waiting on the other side of the tunnel. But the chance to represent Aotearoa on football’s biggest stage, he says, is “worth every moment.”

Bell hails from Ngāti Tūwharetoa, whose ancestral lands stretch across the central plateau of the North Island, encompassing Mount Tongariro and Lake Taupō.

His whakapapa runs deep into these lands, and deeper still into the values they represent.

“It’s a privilege to be here as a Māori football player,” he says. “I know my ancestors would be proud.” His father, Philip Bell, better known to many in New Zealand as DJ Sir-Vere, is a pioneer of Aotearoa’s hip hop scene.

From Rip It Up magazine to MTV’s Wrekognise, from the Aotearoa Hip Hop Summit to the Major Flavours compilations, Sir-Vere helped build the cultural scaffolding that shaped a generation.

For his services to music and broadcasting, he received a Queen’s Service Medal.His son’s honour may not come gilded in the same way, but it carries no less meaning.

“My mum and dad always told me that whatever you do in life, don’t go in half-hearted. Give it everything.”

Bell’s early football memories are stitched into the grounds of Mount Roskill Intermediate, where he first played competitively. That same school is now part of Auckland City FC’s social responsibility programme, home to coaching clinics and a project to build an all-weather pitch and floodlights.

The school recently bestowed two sacred taonga to the club to express its aroha and support for City in America. Bell has been entrusted with keeping one of the taonga during the trip, the other is with skipper Mario Ilich. It is a full-circle moment not lost on the young full back.

“To know the club has formed a close relationship with Mount Roskill Intermediate School means a lot,” he says.

“It’s where I started my journey and now we're giving something back in terms of coaching and infrastructure.”

From those modest beginnings to this unlikely clash with Bayern Munich, Bell has walked a path marked not by glamour but by resilience.

In New Zealand, he explains, Auckland City FC are more often the aggressors, pressing and dominating possession. Here, they must adapt, absorb pressure, and survive.

“Oddly, it suits us,” he says. “Our objective is to ensure that we follow the game plan set out by the coaches and see where it takes us."

Bell is under no illusions about the challenge ahead.

“This is a David versus Goliath moment,” he says. “But once we get out onto the pitch you have to try and live in the moment to an extent."

He has drawn confidence from recent performances, particularly in strong showings in friendly games with Al Ain FC (0-1) and Philadelphia Union II (2-0), where he played well.

“Those moments help,” he says. “They remind you the other teams, while special, are human beings, too.”

His admiration for Bayern’s stars, Musiala, Olise, Gnabry, is tempered by perspective.

“I’ve looked up to them. But now it’s about stepping onto the same field and backing yourself.”

Bell will not define success by the scoreline alone. For him, the journey to this match is as meaningful as the match itself. Behind every run, every pass, every call to his team-mates lies a broader story, of whakapapa and sacrifice, of a mother’s support and a father’s legacy, of Māori identity carried into global arenas.

“Every kid dreams of playing teams like this,” he says. “I’m lucky enough to live it.”

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