Asians in Football: Frank Soo and the footballers that followed the Stoke City and England legend

“Frank Soo was the first person of Chinese heritage and East Asian heritage to play in the English Football League and the first person from an Asian background to play for England,” explains Frank Soo Foundation chair Alan Lau.

That England debut came in a wartime international in 1942, making Soo the first person of colour to play for the Three Lions – Plymouth Argyle trailblazer Jack Leslie, who was Black, was famously denied the opportunity to do so 17 years earlier because of the colour of his skin, despite earning an England call-up.

Soo made nine England appearances during the Second World War, but wartime games were not recognised as official matches by the Football Association. Soo and others who only played during the war never received an international cap. While the Leslie family received an honorary cap at Wembley Stadium last year, the Soo family are still waiting for his honorary England cap to this day.

Soo, who had an English mother and Chinese father, was snapped up as a teenager by Stoke City in 1933 from Liverpool-based Prescot Cables. His talent was identified by the same person who spotted Sir Stanley Matthews – a man regarded by many as one of the greatest players of his generation.

“The reports from his contemporaries were saying how good he (Soo) was,” Lau says.

“He was the captain at Stoke, he captained Sir Stanley Matthews, he was the captain at Leicester (later in his career) and he also captained the RAF team.”

Matthews and Soo also played together at national level during the Second World War, with some pointing to the discrimination suffered by Leslie as the reason why Soo never got an England call-up either side of the war.

“He represented his country [in every sense] during the Second World War. He was in the Royal Air Force,” Soo’s grand niece Jacqui Soo explains.

“There was a cartoon in which he was portrayed as a Chinese figure and it said why is this person playing football for England and representing the national side – I think that had a detrimental effect on his football career.”

Asians in the Premier League | Nev: Park was class

Against all odds, a number of Asian-heritage players have followed in Soo’s footsteps, overcoming adversity to get on to the pitch in English football.

Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville played with one of the best Asian international footballers ever to grace the top division of the English game.

Former Manchester United and South Korea international Ji-Sung Park is one of just 47 Asian internationals to have played in the Premier League.

“Having an Asian in Ji-Sung Park playing for such a big club, it had a big impact on British football. It had a big impact in Korea as well and in Asian football,” Neville says.

“Ji-Sung Park was a great team-mate, on the pitch and off the pitch and a dream of a person off the pitch in respect of his professionalism. He was very quiet, very humble, someone who was popular in the dressing room with all the players. He had a smile on his face, but very serious about his work.

“He was one of those players that you would put at the very top of the most underrated players that you would ever have played with at Manchester United.

“If we had a real problem defensively in a full-back area. Ji-Sun Park would play on that side and would double up with his full-back. He would do the donkey work, the hard work that basically is needed to be done to win a football match, which is not always the beautiful game.

“It’s making sure that you protect and stop, and hassle and harass. And that’s what he did – he pressed. We talk a lot about pressing a lot now – Ji-Sun Park did nothing but press. If Manchester United gave the ball away, he was always the first to react in a transition. We think of these as being new words, but he was doing that back then.

“He famously marked Andrea Pirlo, man-to-man in the San Siro. He doubled up on Lionel Messi in the Nou Camp. He played big roles for us defensively, but also was very important going forward.”

Park changed perceptions in the English game just like Soo did decades earlier.

But less than one per cent of players in the history of the Premier League have been Asian internationals – less than any other continent – with the highest number coming from Europe (79 per cent), according to figures provided by the Premier League towards the end of last season.

Today, the presence of Asians in football extends further, with visible representation now in disability football and at different levels of the women’s game.

Sikh-Punjabi attacker Kira Rai was part of the Derby County side that made history by lifting the National Plate last season, and is one of the women breaking down barriers for British South Asians in football.

“People out there playing sports across the country of a South Asian heritage were not really given the platform to become visible,” she says.

“Now they can see people that have paved the way and can think ‘okay, if they can do it, I can do it’.”

Azeem Amir became England’s youngest-ever B1 blind footballer at the time of his international debut for the Three Lions in 2018.

“If I’m able to do something that people can only dream about and play for my country [I’m happy and proud], he says.

“If we can create a cultural shift within society, I can say I did more than just play, I made a difference.”

Former Liverpool and Arsenal winger Jimmy Carter was one of the first British South Asians to play in the Premier League. But his Asian heritage – through his father Maurice who hailed from the city of Lucknow in India – has only become more widely known in the last decade.

“Back in the day, and we are talking about over 30 years ago, there might have been an opinion that football is not for Asians,” Carter says.

“For me to have represented two of the biggest clubs in world football in Arsenal and Liverpool was beyond my wildest dreams as a little kid, but back then, obviously, no-one really knew that I had Asian heritage.

“To some degree, I regret not giving that more of a voice [in order to inspire the next generation].”

Former Eastern Eye sports editor Zohaib Rashid thinks it’s imperative to understand and learn from the experiences of former players in order to tackle the severe under-representation of South Asians in English football.

“What was their upbringing like? What was the culture like? What were the barriers that they faced and how did they overcome them? Those are important questions,” he says.

“We need to know what it was that was their strength. Because from that, we can build strength in us.”

British South Asians in Football

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