THE JOURNAL
Mr Hamza Choudhury at The Savoy Hotel, London, 2023. Photograph by Mr Paddy McKeown
Mr Hamza Choudhury did not set out to be a trailblazer. At first, it was just about playing football wherever he could – on the street he grew up on or inside his house – which slowly took him places. He was enrolled at a summer football camp before he started school, moved on to his local club, then a Premier League academy and eventually the FA Cup Final.
Playing for Leicester City at Wembley in 2021, Choudhury, who has Bangladeshi and Grenadian ancestry and was raised in a traditional Bengali Muslim household, became the first player of South Asian descent to win the FA Cup. By the time he was breaking records at the highest level of professional football, he had spent his entire career keenly aware that he was part of an underrepresented group within the sport.
“When I was growing up, I played at academies up and down the country, from Southampton all the way up to Newcastle, and I’d maybe see a handful of Asian players,” he says. “I wondered if I was the only Asian or half-Asian who was playing at that top level.”
The world he grew up in was completely different. “My neighbours and my friends were mostly South Asian and they lived and breathed football just as much as I did, whether they were playing at local clubs or watching the teams they supported religiously.”
Now aged 25 and on loan to Watford, Choudhury is one of the few players with South Asian heritage to reach the top of the sport. There is an acknowledgement within football that more needs to be done on this front and the Football Association has laid out plans to address this.
In 2019, it launched its Asian Inclusion Strategy, aimed at redressing the imbalance within the sport. By 2022, the FA had reported important increases in both men’s and women’s grassroots football, although the same report admitted that “the number of professional players of Asian heritage remains significantly lower”. Addressing this was a “strategic priority” for the FA.
“Once you embrace yourself, your culture, your family and who you are, it’s an easier road to get where you want to go”
It is also an important part of Choudhury’s ambition since he began playing professionally. “When I started establishing more around the first team and Premier League, I felt an obligation to my background and to my community to engage with them and have more South Asians in the football league,” he says.
Choudhury’s identity allows him to prosper as a footballer. “I think being comfortable in your own skin allows you to not fear any situations,” he says. “Once you embrace yourself, your culture, your family and who you are, it’s an easier road to get where you want to go.” For Choudhury, this doesn’t just apply to his ethnic background, but also to his Muslim faith.
“We were brought up on faith,” he says. “My family is really close-knit and faith is so important to me. All the good traits I have are from my faith, my family and my culture. With faith come a lot of things you can and can’t do, which has definitely helped me along the way.”
Choudhury’s religion is particularly important to him at this time of year – Ramadan begins in late March. During the holy month, Muslims are encouraged to increase their prayers, readings from the Quran and donations to charity. Another important pillar is fasting. No food is consumed from dawn until sunset each day.
Falling during a busy part of the football season, Choudhury’s fasting will put a strain on his body. Over the course of the month, Watford will play a number of important matches as they attempt to gain promotion to the Premier League. “It’s tough, obviously, with how physical football is,” he says. “As I’m growing up, getting closer with my faith and learning more about my religion, it has become easier. Once you get past the first few days, you start enjoying it and enjoying the process of it. Before you know it, it’s finished and you’re wishing you’d done more.”
The practical realities of observing Ramadan as a player or a football fan are being taken more seriously now. Last season, Liverpool changed its training times to accommodate fasting players, while the Professional Footballers’ Association organised iftar (breaking the fast) events at clubs across the country and the Premier League introduced rules allowing captains to request a break for players to break their fast during evening fixtures.
This rule change came after an informal agreement to allow players to observe iftar was reached between captains. Choudhury’s Leicester City teammate, Mr Wesley Fofana (now at Chelsea), broke his fast during a break in play in a televised match against Crystal Palace in April 2021. “It has a knock-on effect,” Choudhury says. “I wouldn’t necessarily expect people to know it was Ramadan unless they knew people who were fasting, but just seeing that on the TV brings a lot more awareness and helps people understand what other people are going through.”
Choudhury has also worked closely with groups pushing for more Muslim inclusion in sport. In 2021, he began working with EA Sports as part of the gaming company’s Inspire The Next Generation campaign. This partnership included a comic book about Choudhury’s rise to the top of the game – at the time he said, “Without embracing my heritage, my skin and even my hair, I would not be the person or the footballer I am today” – and a collaboration with the Midnight Ramadan League, a grassroots organisation that arranges matches that kick off after iftar to help keen footballers who are observing Ramadan.
“You get the lads breaking their fast, praying and then going to play football together”
“For the community itself, it’s such a good thing,” Choudhury says of working with the Midnight Ramadan League. “You get the lads breaking their fast, praying and then going to play football together. It’s breaking down the barriers to grassroots football, which is just as important as breaking them down at the elite level.”
Choudhury has also worked with Nujum Sports, a group committed to helping Muslim athletes reach the top of the sport. “They’re going to all the clubs in the Football League and seeing if they can open prayer room facilities in the training grounds and the stadiums, and they’re handing out Ramadan boxes to players,” Choudhury says. “They’re doing amazing work. They’re doing a lot to encourage Asian inclusion in football.”
Choudhury’s status as one of the few professional footballers of South Asian descent has put him at the front of the push for wider inclusion, but it has also resonated with people around the world. “When I made my debut, I was flooded with messages about how proud people were,” he says. “People’s grandmas would stop me on the street and tell me how proud they were, even if they’d never watched a game of football in their lives. I got thousands and thousands of messages from people in Bangladesh. They celebrate every achievement and they message me support during hard times.”
Choudhury is attempting to pass on this support. He is also hoping to set a positive example and deliver change for rising stars of the game, so that the next generation of South Asian players don’t travel up and down the country wondering if they’re the only ones.