Middleton-Patel’s exploits came after left-back Neil Taylor – whose mother is Indian – became the first player of Asian heritage to play for Wales’ men’s side at a major tournament during their historic run to the semi-finals of Euro 2016 in France.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Taylor gave his backing to a new Professional Footballers’ Association’s (PFA) Asian Inclusion Mentoring Scheme (AIMS).<\/p>\n
The scheme’s strategy is to “develop a sustainable flow of players of South Asian heritage into the professional game” – namely into the Premier League, English Football League and Women’s Super League.<\/p>\n
Simone Pound – the PFA’s director of equality, diversity and inclusion – states the scheme has demonstrated “impressive year-on-year growth” – with the programme’s figures growing from just six players in 2019 to more than 140 in 2024.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the Football Association of Wales’ Red Wall + series, 43-cap former defender Taylor said of the initiative: “Originally when we had the conversation, it was about getting participation levels up in the UK.<\/p>\n
“Then we actually decided to get some data. What we found out was there’s plenty of participation at grassroots level.<\/p>\n
“Where the numbers fall away is from there (grassroots) to academies. So then we got a real idea of what we needed to do.<\/p>\n
“The old phrase, ‘you can’t be it if you can’t see it’, I never really believed in it much when I was young. But since I’ve got older and have seen what this has done especially, it does play a big part, and I think there is going to be a shift. <\/p>\n
“For our country, the numbers are growing, and they will continue to grow now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Middleton-Patel’s exploits came after left-back Neil Taylor – whose mother is Indian – became the first player of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-269528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114869057835662275","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}