featured-image

Football Association diversity chief Dal Darroch says he understands why many people would describe the lack of South Asian representation in the elite game as "a football emergency”. The 2023/24 Premier League season did not feature a British South Asian for the second successive campaign - the first time the country's single-largest ethnic group has been absent from the top division for two seasons in a row in almost 15 years. The number of British South Asians with a professional contract in the English game has also fallen sharply since a Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) update last year, with Danny Batth, Otis Khan and Aaron Drewe among the players being released.

Sky Sports News exclusively revealed last week that goalkeeper Rohan Luthra is also leaving Championship side Cardiff City. Barely half a per cent of professional footballers in England are from South Asian backgrounds, with just four players from the community totalling at least 500 minutes in the EFL across the 2022/23 season. The FA recently told Sky Sports News that the gross under-representation of South Asians in the professional game is "stark" and that taking steps to address the long-standing issue is now "a long-term aim" for English football's governing body.



FA head of diversity and strategic programmes Darroch has now conceded the community's well-documented absence across the game could be viewed as a crisis. "Many people would say it is a football emergency," he said in Sky Sports' F.

Back to Beauty Page