SANJAY BHANDARI, as chairman of anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out, has emerged as a leading voice in English football, actively playing his part to promote equality and inclusion in the beautiful game.
When he took the reins of the organisation in late 2019, replacing the founder Lord Herman Ouseley, he became only the second chair in the charity’s 27-year history.
Bhandari has made an impressive start to his tenure, launching novel initiatives and bringing in new partnerships, including a £3 million investment package from Sky, as the broadcaster onboarded as Kick It Out’s first new strategic partner as part of its new vision to be a galvanising hub for inclusive change in football.
The charity has also joined forces with Facebook to launch its ‘Take A Stand’ campaign to help fans report discrimination. The social media giant has unveiled a new automated messenger service, enabling people to report match-day discrimination directly to Kick It Out, alongside a new education programme targeted directly at fans of all ages using WhatsApp.
Bhandari has personal reasons to launch an initiative of this kind, as racist taunts have been part and parcel of everyday life for him growing up in 1970s Bilston, Wolverhampton.
In his inaugural speech at Kick It Out, he recalled his first-hand experiences of routine racial abuses in the game in the mid-1990s, adding that he still experiences this, albeit less frequently. In 2015, he had to face abuse when he,
who has been a Manchester United season ticket holder for more than 30 years, was attending a game with his nephew. This is something that made him resolve to make the reporting of incidents of abuse a priority when he joined Kick It Out.
“When I experienced that kind of racism, especially with my nephew, it made me angry but also powerless because I’m doing the calculation of whether I can complain about this person,” he has said.
“You’re thinking about your personal safety and the first instinct is that you hope it goes away. I want to advocate for people to report incidents but also understand the mechanics that it’s quite difficult sometimes.”
An active and recognised leader of equality, diversity and inclusion practice, Bhandari was a member of the Premier League’s Equality Standard Independent Panel for four years and is part of the government-sponsored Parker review into the ethnic diversity of UK boards.
Before taking up a portfolio career as an independent board member, adviser and charity trustee, he had a successful career in professional services, having spent 15 years as a lawyer specialising in fraud and white collar crime and then holding a number of leadership roles at KPMG and EY, where he was a partner for 12 years.
What makes this success particularly illuminating is his humble beginnings from a council estate in Bilston, surviving on benefits. His father moved from India in 1949, but his death when Bhandari was just 15 would leave the family – that included his mother and two brothers – penniless.
A bright and gifted student, Bhandari’s life would transform as he got on a government-assisted scheme which allowed him to take Alevels at Wolverhampton Grammar School. He subsequently secured a place at Cambridge University to study law and joined Peterhouse, a traditionally white and male college, which would also teach him about unconscious bias.
“From my experiences, the more you get exposure to different parts of the English class system, the less overt racism becomes,” he has observed. “It becomes a lot more unconscious and covert. In some ways, having someone call you a name at a football match, at least you can deal with the overt racism because you know that it’s there.”
At English football, where one in three players are black, Asian or minority ethnic, but a much different, much whiter reality exists off the pitch, Bhandari might find his experiences from the university, and later at the City, much more relevant.
He believes football has the ability to lead on racism in society and wants football clubs to have an off-field working environment that re[flects the diversity on the field. He intends to promote a collaborative approach in the “sprawling, extended and sometimes dysfunctional family” that is English football.
“Football has a unique ability to influence social attitudes and can effect positive social change. What I believe is that, for football, the answers will lie in collaborating and diving into the detail where the devil resides,” he has said in the inaugural speech. “Our focus should be on uniting the industry behind a common strategy to kick discrimination out of the game.”
Bhandari has set out a series of goals to achieve in the next decade. These include a game where ‘a black player can play in any stadium and be confident that he will not be abused’ and ‘supporters wearing a hijab, kippah or turban can attend a game without receiving stares or abuse.’
He would also like a professional player with same sex partner not to be ‘news’ and a young girl aspiring to be a pro footballer to have the same opportunity to realise that dream as her brother. As for black, Asian, and minority ethnic coaches, he wants them to be confident that they will get the same opportunities as their white counterparts.
In addition, he wants to see the first player of Asian descent represent England. “We are still waiting for the first Asian player and we’re the largest ethnic minority in this country. Nobody talks about it. We should be talking about that much more than we do.”
