21 Jan 2007,

Times Article

Pardon the cliché, but do you know why Indians don't play football in England? Because whenever they get a corner, they set up a shop. That was a common racist gibe against Asian migrants in the '70s and '80s. In a game dominated by big, fit and fast blokes, Asians still remain the butt of stereotypical jokes: Asian boys don't really know the game, their rice and curry is not good enough to keep them going for 90 minutes, they are short and scrawny, lack speed and stamina, their folks want them to go to fancy universities, get fancier degrees and grab white-collar jobs, and these folks can only swing the small, red cherry, not the big ball.

The jokes can be dismissed but the facts are scary: There are only 3 Asian players in professional English football. There are only about 10 Asian players at Premier League club academies. In a country where Indians have made their mark in all fields, including cricket, they watch the great British passion from the sidelines.

The taunts bother them because Asians do play football in England. They even have a federation of their own. Come summer, the Khalsa Football Federation (KFF) organises five football tournaments all over the country, with 64 adult teams and around 40 junior teams, making it the largest football event in the UK. There are Asian clubs in Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester. During weekdays, they practise. Over the weekends, they play. At these clubs, almost everyone - coaches, ball boys, referees, attendants, trainers and players - is Indian. Men of different ages and from varied backgrounds flock to the grounds and sweat it out under the flood lights as scouts from professional teams sit on the benches looking for potential young stars.

When KFF started its hunt for the stars, most of the teams were mainly Punjabi. But, as the tournament became popular, more teams - comprising people with their roots in Pakistan, Gujarat and Bangladesh - were formed. It has become big now. Sporting Khalsa, formed 15 years ago, runs community-based football teams in Birmingham. It even has a team for six-year-olds and for ladies. Sporting Khalsa has moved into Division One of the West Midlands Regional League and become the first Asian club to own its own ground.

The success of KFF is now forcing big English clubs to look at Asians for the next generation of players: West Ham United has set up the Asians in Football project; Leicester City has employed Rashid Manna as the coach of their under-12 team and Millwall recently played against the KFF to make a statement against racism and to have a good look at the young players in the Asian team.

But it was not easy to achieve this goal. Some coaches really worked hard to make sure that the lads came out and played the game just like they played cricket. They held training sessions and talks in local parks and visited the mosques and temples. They organised 'Family Night Football', complete with Bollywood music, Gujarati food and Punjabi dance to create a bit of football-mania. And it worked.