{"id":30018,"date":"2019-08-27T15:29:19","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T14:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=30018"},"modified":"2019-08-27T15:29:19","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T14:29:19","slug":"footballer-yan-dhandas-drive-to-inspire-the-asian-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/27\/footballer-yan-dhandas-drive-to-inspire-the-asian-generation\/","title":{"rendered":"Footballer Yan Dhanda\u2019s Drive to Inspire The Asian Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Footballer Yan Dhanda who plays for Swansea says he is proud of his Indian heritage and wants to inspire the next generation of British Asian footballers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Birmingham-born Dhanda, who has represented England at under-16 and under-17 level, left West Brom’s youth setup to join Liverpool in 2013. <\/span><\/p>\n

Dhanda moved to Swansea at the beginning of last season in search of senior football.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Stoke’s Danny Batth – the only other player of Indian descent in the Sky Bet Championship – Dhanda’s father, Jas, hails from the North Indian state of Punjab, while his mother is English.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dhanda insists he is not burdened by the weight of community expectation and says trying to become one of the first Indian-origin players to thrive in English football is a huge source of motivation for him.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m super proud to be where I’m from and where my family originate from and I think I’d be stupid not to be,” he told Sky Sports News.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m in a position where I could be one of the first players with Indian ethnicity to go on and achieve great things and that excites me”<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’d never hide the fact that I’m Indian or [not celebrate the fact] that there are no other Indian players out there, because I am proud of who I am. I just love playing football and feel my background helps me.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“I never really thought of myself as a role model because I am still young and I’ve still got a lot to do,” Dhanda added<\/span><\/p>\n

“But people tell me I’m one of only a few Asian professional footballers in the game – and there are millions of Asian kids – Indian, Pakistani all different kinds of races – that want to be footballers.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I think, if they look up to me, I [have to] see myself as a role model for them, and I think it’s down to me to give them good advice and do as much as I can to help them.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Dhanda’s desire to inspire saw the 20-year-old feature in the Football Association’s revamped Bringing Opportunities to Communities campaign, designed to help increase Asian representation across the English game.<\/span><\/p>\n

But his journey towards a career in the professional game was far from smooth, with Dhanda forced to develop a thick skin in the face of adversity and outright racism as an up-and-coming young footballer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0“I’ve had a bit of racism growing when I was playing youth football,” he said<\/span><\/p>\n

“Maybe people thought it was strange not seeing Asian players play football.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’ve had people say the P-word, or like corner shop this or corner shop that – because people stereotype Asians to have those sort of jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It has been a problem for me growing up, but it hasn’t really affected me. My dad’s told me since I was young that if you get racism whether it’s in football, or school, or wherever, just let it make you work harder.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’ve said it before – it doesn’t really affect me, it just drives me on even more. I’ve been strong enough to see past it and not let it or let anyone get to me.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Footballer Yan Dhanda who plays for Swansea says he is proud of his Indian heritage and wants to inspire the next generation of British Asian footballers. Birmingham-born Dhanda, who has represented England at under-16 and under-17 level, left West Brom’s youth setup to join Liverpool in 2013. Dhanda moved to Swansea at the beginning of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}