New Barnet captain Anwar Uddin celebrating promotion with Dagenham & Redbridge
Barnet FC will host the National Asian Soccer Festival this weekend, aimed at unearthing talent from the area’s Asian community.
The event, backed by Kick It Out will give players the opportunity to showcase their skills in front of Football League scouts. The winning team will receive a full day's training with Barnet's first-team coaching staff.
The event is free for the public who can attend 'walk-in' coaching sessions for five to 15-year-olds and lots of fun-activities. Besides the sporting action, there will be seminars on Asian's in football and a panel discussion with high-profile names.
Paul Fairclough, chief executive of Barnet Sports Development and former Barnet manager, has spoken of his desire to see an increase in Asian representation within the English game.
“Not long ago,” says Fairclough, “I looked back over my career and thought: I cannot think of one Asian footballer in all the teams I've managed over 16 years.' I've never, ever had an Asian kid.”
Opportunity
Shortly after The Hive, Barnet's brand new training ground, was opened, an opportunity arose. “A group of Asian kids came in one night [to use the practice pitches],” he says.
“I had a chat with them. I asked, 'Why aren't you lot all over this place?' One kid told me: 'Look — there's loads of Asian kids who love football. We don't all want to play cricket. But we didn't get a chance at school. It was the white kids and the black kids who got picked first. We were always last to get the opportunity.'”
“I decided to start doing something about it,” he says. “I thought: I'm going to find an Asian footballer to come into Barnet's first team.' And I decided to hold a soccer tournament, and find myself a scholar. Or two or three.”
By the end of this month, he will have achieved both of those things. This Saturday his National Asian Soccer Festival will take over The Hive, with matches, coaching sessions, and football forums, and the chance to become Fairclough's first Asian scholar.
Then, in the forthcoming season, Barnet will be captained by new signing Anwar Uddin — one of the few Asian players in professional football, and the first British Asian to skipper a side in any of the top four divisions.
'Transition'
Uddin, whose father is Bangladeshi and his mother English, has been on the books at West Ham, Sheffield Wednesday and, most recently, Dagenham & Redbridge, where he captained them to promotion from the Conference into League One.
He remembers a difficult time growing up in the old East End and breaking into football. “When I grew up I had to face the East End's transition from a white cockney area into a Bengali area,” he says.
“It was hard enough just moving about without getting into trouble, fights in the street and stuff. That's how the east end was, and that's how it was in football.”
“The Asian leagues are all taken really seriously,” Uddin says. “It's massive now. And I'm all for it because it gets people playing football. But at the same time it reflects Asian people and the way they are: they don't integrate well. And that's a flaw in us.
'Ambitions'
“We need to break out to have any ambitions or goals. You can't get sucked into that comfortable zone where you know everyone, everyone speaks the same language. You have to get out there, and even if every other face but yours is white or black, that's what you have to do.”
That is what Uddin did, and what Fairclough is hoping he can persuade others to do, both by Barnet's example in appointing a British Asian as captain, and by the door being very loudly opened to local talent at The Hive on Saturday.
“I'm going to grow this tournament each year,” Fairclough says. “It's going to be a place where Asian footballers can come and be spotted.”
Danny Lynch, Kick It Out's Media and Communications Officer, underlined the organisation's support for the event. "One of Kick It Out's key campaigning areas is increasing the represrentation of Asian players in this country, particularly at semi-pro and pro level. We back this venture and hope it goes someway towards discovering some of the talent out there."
For details and entry forms for The National Asian Soccer Tournament, see thehivefootballcentre.com or call 0208 238 5920
Excerpt from the London Evening Standard, to read this article in full, please click here.
