Abdul Malik Ahad | Building Belonging Through Football, the Bangladeshi Reds and Homes Without Racism

Abdul Malik-Ahad arrived in England on Christmas Day 1979. He was seven years old. He hid under his auntie's poncho at Heathrow because he had never felt cold like it. A few years later, aged ten, he found himself surrounded by football fans in Oldham on a Saturday afternoon before a match. A skinhead put a beer can on his head and smashed it. That was the backdrop to football for the British Bangladeshi community in the early 1980s. You watched from home. You kept the shutters down. But Abdul didn't let it stop him. He built something else. In episode nine of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Abdul in the greasy spoon cafe to talk about belonging, community and what football does when the game that's supposed to bring everyone together isn't yet safe to attend. They talk about the 5-a-side and 7-a-side tournaments Abdul helped organise for the Bangladeshi Youth Movement in Oldham - competitions that started as a way of finding a safe space and became fiercer and more meaningful than anyone expected. A community building itself from the inside out because no one else was going to build it for them. In the second half Abdul talks about a career from community cohesion manager after the 2001 Oldham disturbances to CEO of Steve Biko Housing Association in Liverpool - one of only two Black and Racial Minority housing associations on Merseyside, built on the mission of homes and communities without racism. He brings a Liverpool champions t-shirt to the table. The one his community couldn't celebrate in 2020 because of Covid. So thirty Bangladeshi Reds waited two years, got together at a restaurant in Oldham and finally let it out. Jim closes: proof that the people who had to build their own game from scratch are usually the ones who understand it the most. Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security. Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.