Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Euro Cup 2016: Kolkata Boy Neil Taylor Becomes Wales’ Rising Star

Toulouse: On Monday, Neil Taylor scored Wales’ second goal against Russia. Interestingly Taylor, who plays as a left-back has never scored for his current club team Swansea and scored his last goal in 2010! Gareth Bale ran forward and passed a ball behind the right-back Smolkinov to put Taylor through who thinks about it and hits the keeper and luckily the ball comes back to him and he manages to put it past the keeper.



This is a tournament where Ronaldo, Lewandowski, Ibrahimovic, Muller and Kane haven’t been able to score yet. Eligible to play for either Wales or India, Taylor made his debut for Wales on May 23, 2010 against Croatia. Neil Taylor is the only British Asian playing in the Premier League. Other than him only Michael Chopra and Zesh Rehman have played in the Premier league.
Neil said. “All parents will drill their kids to be education-based, with your dreams put to one side to what will get you through life and get you a career. The obvious question is why aren’t there any already? I think it’s one of them things which has got a stigma attached to it and maybe players believe that they won’t get the opportunity, or that people (coaches) aren’t seeing them. All these different types of things need to change.” Because of Taylor’s non-Indian sounding name, a lot people don’t believe he has an Asian background. Well if they didn't know him before, they are going to know him now!”

Neil is Indian-Welsh. The 27-year-old footballer's mother comes from Calcutta and I have close family both there and in Delhi. To have his presence be felt at such a huge international stage is no mean feat and Neil is certainly paving the way for more budding footballers to take up the sport professionally.

No comments:

Post a Comment