There’s now a Ray of light that Asians won’t be lost to our game
The Bermuda Triangle, Area 51 and who shot JFK all come secondary in the baffling stakes to the mysterious lack of Asian players in British football.
It’s a strange one right enough and a topic which every so often gets an airing before being kicked back into the long grass.
Ray McKinnon’s grand plans for Queen’s Park were outlined in Record Sport yesterday – investment, progressing to a full-time set-up and much more besides.
But the Spiders boss knows his operation in Glasgow’s south side includes engaging with the local community and he’s not one to miss a trick.
McKinnon has a large As i a n community on his Mount Fl o r i d a doorstep and if he discovers a way to e n c ou r a ge the undoubted talent within that group then it could be a bigger groundbreaker t ha n any t h i n g currently being drawn as the club moves from amateur to professional status.
Here’s an ethnic minority stat which is a shocker: Despite making up eight per cent of the United Kingdom’s population, only 11 British South Asians have played professional football in England.
Neil Taylor, now at Aston Villa, is the last to have done so in the Premier League. Before him, only Michael Chopra and Zesh Rehman had reached the top division.
Former Rangers youth player Jazz Juttla went on to play for Morton and became the only Indian ever to feature in Scotland at top-team level.
Dig a bit deeper and it becomes a bit more damning. Celtic had Abdul Salim on the books in the 1930s and Aberdeen signed Armando Mascarenhas in the 1950s but neither Indian played a first-team fixture. Put another way, just 0.3 per cent of British footballers are Asian.
There are various factors at play. Integration of different religious groups, cultures and nationalities into Scottish football has traditionally been a challenge.
A la ck of pa rent a l encouragement and a cultural reluctance to stray from t radi t iona l communit y boundaries also lie at the heart of the issue.
The absence of role models and stereotyping of Asian sport being focused away from football to the likes of cricket and squash isn’t helpful either.
An Asian mate explains away the conundrum of trying to convince kids from this ethnic group to get along to coaching sessions and striving for a career in football as being a bridge many will not cross.
But cul tura l changes must go both way s , engagement from clubs and a drive to get all ethnic minority kids integrated into their systems must be more than just the odd promotional campaign and a bit of lip service.
Queen’s Park should be maximising all of the advantages they have as they attempt to revolutionise the club and making the most of what’s in their immediate catchment area could become something genuinely radical.
Getting Asians into the sport shouldn’t be beyond Scottish football.
After all, we may or may not have managed to put a man on the moon so let’s see if the Spiders can show the exclusion of this group in our game is nothing more than a conspiracy theory.