‘Isolated and alone’: boy, 12, racially abused at football match in London

The family of a 12-year-old footballer of Asian heritage who was racially abused during a match has criticised his local Football Association for a lack of support and said he has received no apology from the opposition team involved.

Sathi Balaguru, was playing in a nine-a-side game for Pitshanger FC in west London, when he was tripped and called an “Indian boy” during a penalty incident. Another player on the opposing side directed a racist Indian accent towards him. Sathi is British and of Sri Lankan heritage.

It has left him upset and 16 months since the incident he has decided to speak out because he wants “everyone to have an equal chance”. He is concerned the handling of his case suggested his ethnicity may limit his progress in the game.

Balaguru was the only player from an Asian background on the pitch and said he now felt as though “having an Asian background will already bring my chances down by about 50% of being a professional footballer”.

His experience comes amid concern at the lack of players of south Asian heritage in football’s top flight.

The FA describes Asian communities as “the most under-represented in almost every area of the grassroots and professional games”.

The Leicester player Hamza Choudhury last year became the first British Asian to win the FA Cup. But in the 2019/20 season only eight out of about 4,000 English professional footballers who played in the top four divisions were British Asian, according to one tally.

Sathi’s team was playing Wealdstone Youth FC in October 2020 when the racism flared up and was recorded in the referee’s report. He said he tried to “rise above it”, but after the game he felt “isolated and alone”.

“I had never experienced it before,” he said. “I had no way to