Special needs is an area football needs to focus more on, says grassroots coach Bal Singh
“Not everyone who joins us might turn out to be a professional footballer, but what we can promise is they will be a better person when they step out of this place,” says grassroots football coach Bal Singh when asked what the Khalsa Football Academy stands for.
The academy, founded by Singh with the help of a group of volunteers in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, has brought together communities in the area by providing weekly football and futsal activities for children, adults and those with learning difficulties and special needs for the past 35 years.
Singh works closely with the Asian, African, South American and Eastern and Central European communities in and around the area and for his contributions to the sport was presented with a medal by the then Duke of Cambridge Prince William as part of the Football Association’s 150th anniversary in 2013.
Singh also does programs for the Asian communities in 10 schools in the region while also doing coach mentoring to encourage more Asians to get into coaching. He is also part of the Hertfordshire FA’s Inclusion Advisory Group (IAG) which provides advice and guidance to the football body on all equality matters.
Born to parents from Punjab, India, who migrated to England in the 1960s, Singh is one of the few British Asian coaches to possess the UEFA A license and a Brazilian Pro license. Khalsa has collaborated with top clubs such as AC Milan, Valencia, AS Roma and Parma to provide coaching to kids from underrepresented communities.
“Before founding the academy, I was told I would never be a successful coach because I was a Sikh,” said Singh, who knows first hand the challenges a person from an Asian background faces in football. “We played football for six hours a day as kids during the summer holidays and sometimes three hours after school,” he reminisced.
“I grew up in a very racist environment in the 1980s, so we played in parks, and we were all Asians; football was a way we supported each other.. But I went on to represent my school at a national level and also played cricket but the pathways were simply not there even if we were good enough.”
“It’s always the pathways and someone’s perception if someone’s good or not,” said Singh who fell in love with the sport after watching Diego Maradona and his Argentina national team in the early 1980s and founded the academy in 1988.
“As someone who has coached futsal for many years now, I have seen Asians who are on par with anyone when it comes to technique and skills. The British game has historically focused more on physical attributes, such as size and strength, which may explain why the Asian community has faced challenges in gaining recognition.”
Singh is confident that with the game in England evolving, there will be more British Asians breaking into the higher levels of the sport in years to come. “We have got a league that the academy organises where footballers from diverse backgrounds can showcase their skills and have the opportunity to be scouted,” he said.
As someone who identifies talent for Watford FC, Singh said it is still challenging to find a lot of Asians who he would recommend to the club and he felt there is much more to be done within the community. “I think it is high time for the community to reach out to the clubs, as we have done here at Khalsa,” he said.
“We have collaborated with various clubs across the country, and now scouts come to evaluate our players, providing honest opinions regardless of whether they are positive or negative. So, I believe it’s time for us to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and work hard to succeed in professional football.”
Over the years, Khalsa have produced players like Jhai Dhillon who played for Chelsea at youth level and Stevenage professionally and Slovakian midfielder Dominik Topolsky who went on to play for Marseille B team. Singh said it is not just the players but the coaches who are also blocked off from accessing the pathways.
“There’s a myth that it is the FA who should be doing more, but I think the football clubs have been the biggest problem when it comes to Asians getting access to the coaching ladders. If you are an Asian coach, then it’s a bit of a closed shop as the clubs tend to prefer only coaches coming from a particular background,” Singh said.
Another area, Singh pointed out, that football needs to do more is for people with special needs. “I think football has lot of room for improvement when it comes to special needs programmes. There isn’t enough education, and it’s not a level playing field. Many special needs children face a lot of discrimination in the sport,” he said.
“The FA says football is for all but is it really? I still think there needs to be a lot more work done nationally when it comes to people with special needs,” said Singh, who has trained several individuals with additional needs, including England women’s deaf futsal player Lucindha Lawson.
Though he might not be able to bring in sweeping changes, Singh said he is doing what he can to affect the community around him with his work – by being a good football coach. “I think a good coach needs to learn about people’s cultures and their political and spiritual views in order to communicate well with them,” he said.
“You need to do more than your coaching badges. You need to know when a person needs an arm around their shoulder and when they might need a good talking to. It’s about adapting your coaching style according to your players and it is the smile on their faces that makes me feel content as a football coach,” Singh said.
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