MARKANDAY: YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

THE first British south Asian to play for Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, Dilan Markanday (left), has urged south Asian players to believe it was possible for them to reach the top. He was speaking to 70 local schoolchildren and their families at the Rovers Community Trust’s Emerging South Asian Rovers talent ID day at the club’s Brockhall

Village Academy.

“The best advice I would give is probably just to believe. If you’re good enough, then you can make it. Don’t think that there’s anything against you because you’re south Asian. It’s not about racism, it’s about creating opportunity,” Markanday, who now plays for Blackburn Rovers, told the Times.

“It’s not just about making it here, making it in this career, you can go to other clubs. You see many stories of amazing players who have been released and have come back.

It’s just about the kids and the parents understanding opportunities.”

Markanday, 20, added that he was passionate about achieving better representation, as well as kickstarting his Rovers career after last season’s injury problems. He also spoke about the PFA’s Asian Inclusion Mentoring Scheme (AIMS).

Having been spotted at the grassroots level, Markanday was at Tottenham Hotspur from the age of 12. Having signed for Blackburn after leaving Spurs in January, he sustained a hamstring injury on his debut in the 2-0 defeat at Hull City, which required surgery and kept him out for four months.

After his move to Rovers, fellow British Asian footballers Arjan Raikhy of Aston Villa; Zidane Iqbal of Manchester United; and Ross County’s Yann Dhanda were among those to congratulate him.

According to Markanday, he had the right support network during the initial days. “My dad and my mum taking me to train even when

I didn’t want to go, stuff like that has helped me be here today, so I can’t thank them enough. Hopefully, the families here can see that as well,” he told the Times.

Riz Rehman, the PFA player inclusion executive who set up AIMS last year, has gathered data on south Asian academy-level representation. Out of the 46 academies, he discovered that 103 scholars and academy players were of south Asian heritage, a figure he said he wants to see increase.