The Trailblazer:

Michael Chopra is the first British-Asian player to play football in the Premier League and he was a former England youth international, but was he the first British-Asian to play at top level in England. Frank Soo should have been Britain’s first Asian international footballer. Soo played for Stoke City between 1933-45, guesting for other clubs, including Everton and Chelsea during the war years. Among his team-mates at Stoke was one of England’s greatest players Sir Stanley Matthews. Soo was a popular player and seemed destined to be capped by England, but World War Two robbed him of his opportunity.

Between 1942-45 Soo played nine times for the England National team. His first international was against Wales at Ninian Park, but these matches were not recognised as full internationals. He joined Leicester City for a then substantial fee of £4600, but never played for the club. Nevertheless Leicester made a profit of £400 by selling him on to Luton Town. He played for them for three years before joining non-league Chelmsford City for £2500 Soo hung up his boots in 1952.

When his playing career ended Soo continued to pave the way for future generations. Having learned to coach while still at Chelmsford he subsequently went into management in Italy with Padova Calcio, but he worked mainly in Scandinavia, beginning with the Norwegian national team in 1952. He also managed in Sweden and Denmark, before a season at Scunthorpe, then in the second division. Further opportunities followed in Sweden and Denmark. Frank Soo died in 1991. He remains the most successful player of Asian origin that Britain ever produced.

The Long Wait:

Over half a century after Frank Soo hung up his boots Britain still has not produced an international quality player of Asian origins. The Netherlands has achieved it repeatedly with several players of South Moluccan or Indonesian heritage such as Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Roy Makaay, among many others – an incredible return given the small size of the Dutch-Asian community.

France has produced an Indian origin player via Mauritius. Vikash Dhorasoo played in the World Cup final in 2006. France achieved that with a comparatively small Asian talent pool to draw on. Even Spain has produced a European Championship winning player in Valencia’s David Silva. The Netherlands, France and Spain have all produced top quality Asian-origin internationals with a small Asian community. England has a far bigger talent pool at its disposal, but none of the home countries have capped a British-Asian. How can this be and what is the solution?

“I wouldn’t know the exact answer to it, but for me it’s going to be one of two things,” former Wimbledon player and Manager of Cardiff City’s academy, Neal Ardley told us exclusively. “It would either be socially – how many Asian players actually play in the game here? Secondly it would be the tempo of the game over here is fast and powerful and a lot more of the English game’s built on strength and speed, rather than technical. That ends up being a second issue – whether the Asian players that do come in generally cope with that; I think it’s more of a social thing.”

Sporting Competition:

It is an issue that has taxed the minds of some of the best brains in football. How can a country with such a large Asian community have failed to tap such a large area of talent? “I don’t really have the ultimate answer to that,” says Noel Blake a professional footballer whose playing career lasted almost a quarter of a century. “What I do know from personal experience is this; there are Asian generations in my time in England that didn’t want to come to football. That’s a fact, because the culture thing was an issue in certain groups in the seventies and eighties. There was a cultural thing there. Then you’ve got third and fourth generation of Asian kids now growing up in England who are more westernised shall we say for want of a better word, so therefore they’re going to be more into sport – into football.”

And football had to compete against other sports. It still does. Cricket never had a problem recruiting players from the Asian community. Monty Panesar lost his central contract, but the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) insist that this will not affect the confidence of British-Asian cricketers. “It's worth pointing out that the second spinner chosen for the South African tour was another British Asian, Adil Rashid and that Ajmal Shahzad has also now broken through into the senior squad for the first time,” said Andrew Walpole – the ECB’s General Manager for Communications, Publications and New Media.

Cricket has succeeded in attracting Asians to take up the sport where other sports, most notably football have failed. “We are absolutely committed to maximising participation across all sections of the community including the British Asian community” said Walpole. “We have a network of development officers across the country and a key priority for them is reaching out to areas where there is a significant ethnic minority population. Middlesex, for example, have done excellent outreach work into the East End of London where there is a large Asian population as have many other Counties.”

The ECB is determined not to lose its advantage. “We have invested very heavily in grass-roots development and Coaching - 23,000 new Coaches qualified in last four years for example, and this is having an impact in bringing new people into cricket from all sections of the community,” he said. “There are cultural and historic reasons why cricket has greater appeal to the British Asian community than football. But we are certainly not complacent and fully aware that we cannot automatically assume that will continue to be the case. Soccer now has a huge reach in Asia via TV exposure for the Premier League and the challenge for us going forward is to make sure that cricket continues to be the number one sport for British Asians in this country.”

Football needs to take careful note. Cricket has no problem recruiting Asian talent, yet sees the need to go into the Asian community to make sure that talent is not being missed. Why isn’t football doing this?