Racial abuse putting off Asian football fans?

Football may be the most popular sport in Leicester, but a survey says few Asians support the local team.

Football may be the most popular sport in Leicester, a town with a large Indian origin population, but a survey says few Asians support the local team - possibly due to the fear of racial abuse.

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Amar Singh, editor of Eastern Eye, a leading British Asian weekly that recently ran what it called the biggest survey of Asian football fans in the country, warned that young Asians in Leicester were turning their back on the local football team, the Foxes, to become armchair fans of glamour teams such as Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool.

Singh said he believed many people were afraid of being targeted by racists, after the survey showed that 25 percent of all Asians had been victims of racial abuse during a game.

Out of the 200 people in the survey, 10 were from Leicester and only one said he was a Foxes fan.

Singh said: "I don't think a lot of Asian people feel an affinity to their local club.

"The Asian community is so dynamic in Leicester and organises so much, I think the club is missing out on a major fan base."

He said the club should forge closer links with the Asian community and hold football events during religious festivals.

The two percent of Asians who make up the average Leicester crowd was not good enough for a city with such a culturally diverse population.

Navjot Singh Mahil, 37, runs a bar in the city centre and has supported the Foxes since he was four.

Mahil said: "It is very difficult to get rid of the stigma that if you go to a football match you might be attacked by yobs or be racially abused.

"Things were terrible when I first went - they have improved, but not to the point that nothing else should be done."

Rashid Abba, the Foxes football in the community development officer, said the club had worked extensively in schools within ethnic minority areas.

Leicester has three Asian players in the academy, but Abba said youngsters had cultural and financial barriers to becoming footballers.

He said: "A lot of kids go to the temple or mosque after school, so they cannot play football. Things are beginning to change. We have laid the seeds, but there is still a long way to go."

A Leicester City Football Club spokeswoman said the club had worked to encourage support in ethnic minority communities.

She said: "We have been working hard to attract fans who have historically not been made to feel welcome."

She said the club had held a summer Pepsi Max Challenge, in which Leicester City took on East Bengal of India to attract an Asian audience.