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Former Red Carter on being the Premier League’s ‘first Asian player’
Sharing a name with a former president of the United States, it is not obvious to everyone that former Liverpool midfielder Jimmy Carter was the first Asian player in the Premier League.
However, in an in-depth interview with the BBC, the 55-year-old from Hammersmith who joined the Reds for £ 800,000 in January 1991 from Millwall talks about his Indian heritage.
Carter received the coveted number 7 jersey at Anfield by former player and starting coach and legendary Kenny Dalglish, but with the Scotsman leaving just a month later, he didn’t fit into new boss Graeme Souness’s plans and returned to London to join Arsenal earlier. of the year is over.
Carter was with the Gunners when the English top flight was renamed the Premier League in 1992 and looking back on their move to Merseyside, Carter says:
“When I signed for Liverpool, it was never mentioned: ‘Do you have any Asian origin or foreign heritage?
“I was very lucky to get my second chance in football and what I didn’t want to do, look back, was draw attention to anything that could be seen as a detriment to me. There were no Asian players back then.
“People were still talking about black players saying they didn’t like the cold, or Asian players were too light. I couldn’t allow myself to grow something that could hurt my career.”
“If I had highlighted my British heritage in Asia it might have shone the light on being the first to play for Liverpool and Arsenal.
“I could have given that belief to young people across the country that they could too. But overall, even taking that into consideration, I still don’t have any underlying regrets.
“There is a part of regret for not being able to feel strong enough or have the conviction in that moment to really come out and highlight it. But more than that was the fact that, to do that would be to point me out to someone different, when it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be about the color of your skin.
“It has to feel good in every way for you to reveal something. It wasn’t a conscious decision that, ‘I’m going to keep this a secret.’ It was none of that.
“If people come up to me and say, ‘I spoke to your father the other day, I didn’t know you were Asian,’ I’d be so happy. I would never be someone to hide that.”
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