Questions for Kick It Out ambassador Zesh Rehman (Fulham/QPR) needed by midday Saturday 27th

I'm happy to announce that we have Kick It Out ambassador Zesh Rehman on V2 Football Podcast. We will interviewing on Saturday (27th)

Zeshan "Zesh" Rehman (Urdu: ذيشان رحمان‎; born 14 October 1983)[2] is a British-Pakistani professional footballer who plays for Pahang FA in the Malaysia Super League as a defender.

He was the first British Asian to start a Premier League match and is the first to have played in all four divisions of professional football in England. He also plays for the Pakistan national football team and was the first Pakistani international footballer to play professional football in England, Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia,[3][4] as well as the first Pakistani international to play in the AFC Cup.[5] He has played over 300 senior career games in four different Nations. Over 100 of those games have been played in Asia. (http://manage.mmail.com.my/story/it-was-divine-intervention-believes-zesh-80939), (http://www.fourfourtwo.com/my/features/rehman-craving-fulham-escape). He started his career at Fulham and made a total of 21 league appearances. During his time at Fulham he had loan spells at Brighton & Hove Albion and Norwich City. Having previously represented England at under-18, under-19 and under-20 levels, in 2005 he made his debut for Pakistan. A transfer to Queens Park Rangers followed and he went on to make 46 appearances for the club. During his three years there he went on loan to Brighton & Hove Albion, Blackpool and Bradford City.

The third transfer of his career involved him moving to Bradford on a free transfer in June 2009. So far Rehman has made fifteen appearances for the Pakistan national team and has participated in the World Cup 2010 qualifiers. Outside of football he is known for being an ambassador for Kick It Out, the Asian Football Network and the Show Racism The Red Card campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zesh_Rehman

Please Send Us your Questions!!!

(Guests subject to change )

Do you think positive discrimination is the way forward for clubs to address the percieved issues with minority players in professional football in the UK.

If so do you think a club would 'hold down' said players considering they could be worth a lot of money in later years.

If not, do you think it's a cultural issue that stops some minoritys (especially young asians) possibly fulfilling their potentials?

Do you believe that Fifa and Uefa do enough to combat racism and do you think the punishments are harsh enough (including in the UK leagues).

Do you think a 'Rooney rule' is needed in British football, and how would you see it working in practice?

Do you think an Asian team will ever win the World Cup?

What's a Rooney Rule? (apologies if i'm being thick as ....)

Derbymanc wrote:What's a Rooney Rule? (apologies if i'm being thick as ....)

It's a rule the NFL introduced that requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs.

1) Why does the colour of someone's skin matter so much? I mean there is plenty of talk about getting more managers with darker skin into managerial positions in the Premier and Football League. Why does this matter? The colour of a person's skin has no bearing on their character or their ability.

2) Why are discriminatory policies such as the Rooney rule even being legimately discussed? It may be dressed up as something different, but positive discrimination is still discrimination and, therefore, it is wrong. Discrimination can never be defeated by discriminating. That is hypocrisy at its finest.

3) Why do such discriminatory policies, like the aforementioned Rooney rule, only ever work in favour of people who do not have white coloured skin? For instance, I understand just over 30% of players in the English Premier League and Football League have dark skin, which is of course a greater percentage than the population of England. In other words, players with white skin are under-represented in the English Premier and Football League, yet no similar action to the Rooney rule is made to arrest this change: why is this so?

Do cretins like Rio Ferdinand deserve the plaudits they bizarrely receive from certain quarters when agreeing with the Ashley Cole "Bounty bar" comments clearly show the man is an idiot and should be kept as far away from football as possible?

People like Jason Roberts appear far more eloquent (although with Jason there does appear to be a simmering volatility barely held in check) yet the media at large seem obsessed with people like Ferdinand.

Should big clubs be forced to sign intelligent articulate socially aware minority players who may not actually be any good to outweigh the negativity created by the Rio Ferdinand types who couldn't hold an intelligent conversation with a toilet roll? I'm thinking the love child of Graham le Saux and Emile Heskey