Transforming power relationships within grassroots and professional football to engender social change: re-visiting the exclusion of British Asians

This chapter revisits the exclusion of British Asians from professional football and reflects upon the authors' previous writing and activism in relation to it. Specifically Randhawa and Burdsey engage with ideas of transformation, in two distinct manifestations. They consider the extent to which British professional football has failed to transform into an occupational and consumer culture in which the positive long-term social change necessary for increasing British Asian participation can occur. In addition, they explore the transformational possibilities and difficulties of academic scholarship, with regard to practical measures to overcome exclusion, and to influence the terms of, and contributors to, the debate. The chapter comprises of three broad elements: an overview of the authors' backgrounds working on/with British Asians in football, focusing explicitly on academic-practitioner-activist partnership working and notions of knowledge translation; a (re)iteration of their position on the "Asians in Football" debate and explanation of the contemporary exclusion of British Asians from the professional game; and a consideration of some practical measures for challenging this scenario, via a transformation in the distribution of power as it pertains to current initiatives to overcome British Asian exclusion.