26 March 2015

Football is multicultural – but you wouldn’t know it looking at the crowd

"The fact that the majority of players in any Premiership game these days are foreign, and so many of them black, does not seem to have had an appreciable effect on the faces in the crowd."

By Hunter Davies

(Photo By The crowd at Old Trafford. Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

One of the joys when watching Man United on the telly is looking out for the Sikhs. They sit just behind the dugout at Old Trafford, on the second row, unmistakable with their turbans and beards. Hard to tell their ages and work out whether they are brothers, cousins, fathers or sons. One beard does look a bit greyer than the others.

Normally, there are three, but now and again the camera edges sideways and it looks as though there could be more. Sometimes they are in Man United tops.