In the absence of any British-Asian players in the English Premiership, league champions Chelsea are putting young Asians through their paces to see if any of them can make the grade.
Jaz Dhami, 25, is a talented Asian role model. He is a bhangra singer and coaches an under-10s soccer team in his spare time. Who better — in the absence of any British-Asian players in the English Premiership — to help launch Chelsea’s second annual Search for an Asian Soccer Star?
Last year, more than 350 wannabes, aged eight to 13, traveled to Chelsea’s training ground in Cobham, Surrey, south of London, to be put through their paces by some of the shrewdest coaches in the game. This coming weekend the Premier League champions are expecting many more to turn up.
The initiative is the first of its kind to be undertaken by a professional soccer club.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing that Asians can’t play football; that they’re only interested in cricket; that they have the wrong diet; that their parents want them all to be lawyers and doctors. It’s all complete nonsense,” said Simon Taylor, Chelsea’s head of corporate social responsibility.
“A football club should represent every strata of society, and Chelsea is open to using its prestige and influence to say that football can make a huge difference,” he said.
Black players are now accepted as an integral part of the professional game. But it was very different in the 1970s and 1980s when Cyrille Regis, John Barnes and Viv Anderson were making their names and the far right National Front was caused trouble at soccer stadiums.
When Andy Cole made his debut at Newcastle’s St James’s Park, Taylor, then a student in the city, recalls: “There were protests outside the ground. But Andy scored a hat-trick that day and we heard no more from the protesters.”
The same year, 1993, Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football was founded by the Commission for Racial Equality and the Professional Footballers’ Association. Now shortened to Kick it Out, the campaign has turned its attention to combating the under-representation of Asian players through its One Game, One Community campaign. Director Piara Powar wants other clubs to follow Chelsea’s example.
Zesh Rehman was the first British Asian to play in the Premier League when he signed for the London club Fulham. Now captain of Bradford City soccer club, in Division Two, he has launched a foundation to encourage “the next generation” to look for the opportunities that soccer can offer.
“I remember a Sunday league coach telling me when I was 10 that I’d never make it because of my background ... My older brother Rizwan and me played in mixed teams and encountered a lot of racist comments. But you have to be mentally tough enough to block them out. We were lucky that we had 100% support from our parents, and Mum made sure we had the right diet from the age of 12 onwards,” Rehman said.
Three of the most promising youngsters to emerge, Jordan Sidhu, A’ameer Kstantin-Murphy and Jhai Singh Dhillon, spent a week with Chelsea’s academy.
Sidhu and Kstantin-Murphy have since signed to join youth academies at Southend and Leyton Orient.
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