Racist abuse made me want to succeed more, admits Dhanda
SWANSEA City star Yan Dhanda has revealed how he was racially motivated to make it in professional football after being called the Pword during kick-abouts growing up as a kid in the West Midlands.
The 20-year-old went from his local park, in Tipton, to the first-team squad at the Liberty Stadium after spells in the West Brom and Liverpool youth teams.
Dhanda was a regular in the youth side of the six-times Champions League winners before leaving Merseyside for south Wales in May last year.
He has also been capped at Under-16 and Under-17 level for England and is one of the very few professional players in the British game, who is of Asian descent.
There’s around a dozen Asians currently playing professionally in the four divisions with former Swan, Aston Villa and Wales defender Neil Taylor, whose mother is a Bengali and from Kolkata, and Leicester’s Hamza Choudhury among the highest profile.
Dhanda himself is of mixed race: English on his mother’s side and Punjabi on his father’s. But it didn’t stop him being subjected to the P-word when growing up.
He told The Guardian: “It was from random people who’d either be playing with me and my friends or against us.
“They’d say things like, ‘he’s a Paki, he’s never going to make it [as a footballer]’. I’ve also heard it a few times since – ‘Paki this, Paki that’, again from random people.
“But it never affected me. It just made me want to prove those people wrong.
“Growing up, I never really thought about why there were so few Asians in football – I was purely focused on making it myself. But now it does ring alarm bells.
“My dad also helped me deal with racism. From a young age he told me that if people said horrible stuff to me they were stupid and I should just ignore them. Which is what I’ve always done.
“It’s important that as many Asians as possible make it at the highest level. We’re role models for the next generation and they need to see football is for them.
“If you love doing something and want to make it your career, you should be able to do so, regardless of your background.”
Dhanda made a sensational start to his Swansea career, scoring with his first touch in professional football off the bench against Sheffield United last season. He found first-team opportunities harder to come by as the campaign progressed, but with Steve Cooper at the helm in SA1, he will be hoping for more game-time this time round.