The "Asian Frame", Football and the Sport Media

Abstract

This article investigates the British-Asian exclusion within English professional football. At present there are only five ‘British-Asian’ professionals despite there being a population of over 3.6 million. This exclusion is further highlighted when we consider the 1.8 million black demographic who represent over 250 players at professional level. Hence, this begs the question: Where are the British-Asian football players? Despite the barriers being multi-dimensional, this research will tackle one perceived barrier in particular: ‘The Asian frame’. Therefore, the article will (a) historically analyse the concept of ‘race’ in order to provide the theoretical backbone (b) link these ideas to the colonisation times whereby ‘Others’ were racialised (c) highlight the relationship between these colonially formed ideologies and sport (d) examine to what extent these archaic stereotypes are still evident within the sport media and football, and finally (e) propose how we can dispel and combat these myths going forward. Although Miles (1989: 72) suggests that ‘race’ ‘should be explicitly and consistently confined to the dustbin of analytically useless terms’, the racialised stereotype of South-Asian physical inferiority is one that is commonly attached to the under representation of British-Asian football players. But, is there any truth in it? And, are these stereotypes simply innocent or have they actually prevented British-Asian participation?