There is a new football book published this month called “British Asians and Football” by Dan Burdsey. The book is based on research aimed at establishing the reasons why there are so few British Asians in football.The author interviews various British Asian people, ranging from Harpal Singh, a former Leeds player who crumbled under the media spotlight trying to cope with the burden of being the first to break through at the highest level of football, through to non-league players.
His conclusion is that the key issues include:
Media pressure
Racial stereotyping
Pressure to be ‘one of the lads’, compromising Asian culture
Absence of a role model
Drawing parallels with other areas of life where certain groups of people fail to achieve, I would put money on it that the reasons are far more likely to be sociological than physiological.
It just goes to show that the hardest ‘isms’ to crack are the invisible ones.
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