Black History Month Players: Les Ferdinand
As October is Black History Month in the UK, I will spend this month publishing threads on X (formerly Twitter) on certain players who have been part of a long and distinguished line of Black representation at West Ham United. With this being the second year I have undertaken this exercise, I thought it would be fair to publish a blog post for those who don't have X or find threads on the platform difficult to read. Feel free to read last year's threads, via this link, but this post and today's thread on X is on "Sir" Les Ferdinand, which ties in perfectly with West Ham & Newcastle, two clubs that "Sir Les" represented in his career, playing one another this afternoon.
Born in West London on the 8th of December 1966, Ferdinand didn’t take the academy route many players take into professional football, instead taking the non-league route by playing for teams in West London including Southall & Hayes, working as a painter to make ends meet outside of football.
During his time with Southall, Ferdinand was part of the team that reached the FA Vase final in 1986, before moving to Hayes where he would score 20 goals in 42 games to earn a move to QPR at the age of 20. Ferdinand would spend 8 years with QPR, but it would take him 2 years to really break into the first team. During this time, he would go on loan to Brentford & Turkish side Bekistas, where he won the Turkish Cup in 1989 & scored 14 goals in 24 games.
Ferdinand’s prolific form for QPR continued & by the time he left for Newcastle in 1995, he had scored 90 goals in 184 games. His £6m move saw former side Hayes earn 10% of that, who used the £600,000 to build a function suite, which they named in his honour.
It was at Newcastle where Ferdinand earned his “Sir Les” nickname, as due to his good nature & kindness to supporters, fans felt it best reflected his gentlemanly manner on & off the pitch. He was also inducted into the Newcastle United Hall of fame in 2017 as it was at Newcastle that Ferdinand was at the height of powers, scoring 50 goals in 84 games in 2 seasons with the club. His partnership with Alan Shearer, as the two best strikers in the country at the time, saw Newcastle almost win the 1996 Premier League title, but this wasn’t to be. After such an incredible season, Ferdinand would also be named the PFA Player of the Year for 1996, becoming the first black player in the Premier League era to win the award and the second black player to win after John Barnes in 1988.
Ferdinand would then move to Tottenham in 1997, which was special to Ferdinand as they were his boyhood club. In his 6 years with Spurs, he won the League Cup in 1999, but constant injuries only saw him score 39 goals in 149 games before moving to West Ham in 2003.
Joining West Ham in 2003 for half a season, Ferdinand would score 2 goals in 14 games, but his time at the club would be remembered for his committed contributions to the team, playing alongside Jermain Defoe, Freddie Kanoute & Paolo Di Canio at different points of the season as the club were narrowly relegated on 42 points, which is still the highest record points total for a team relegated in the Premier League.
After West Ham, Ferdinand would spend the final 3 years of his career in brief spells with Leicester, Bolton, Reading & Watford before retiring in 2006, a few months shy of his 40th birthday.
Since retiring, Ferdinand has been involved in the coaching & executive sides of the game. He would spend 6 years with Tottenham as an attacking coach, before returning to QPR to become director of football, a role he has held since 2015.
In his club career, Ferdinand is remembered as a player who was a gentleman on and off the pitch & would give committed performances every time he played. But like most gentlemen, he would not stand for dishonest actions he encountered on & off the pitch.
A huge part of Ferdinand’s work away from the pitch has been his anti-racism work, serving as a long-term ambassador for Show Racism the Red card, having joined the charity early on due to being at Newcastle alongside the charity’s founder Shaka Hislop. Ferdinand states that whilst charities like Show Racism the Red Card or Kick It Out are doing good work, they’re undermined by a lack of will by football authorities to seriously punish racist behaviour.
Ferdinand believes that this inability to seriously punish racist behaviour is a result of football gesturing to push for eradication of racism through gestures like taking the knee, but failing to implement any real action or solutions to ending racism in sport. This is because Ferdinand believes that football is obsessed with tokenism, believing that the introduction of the Rooney rule, where clubs have to interview at least one BAME candidate who applied for the role, promotes token gestures in football without actually tackling the problem. Ferdinand is right! Whilst all these gestures are very well & good, if there’s no sustainable action behind them, they become empty and fundamentally undermine the fight against racism. This in turn can discourage black representation within the game. Ferdinand believes that if black representation in football is to be rewarded by tokenism, then it’s false and is not representative of true equality in football. Therefore, merit is the truest measure to distinguish the real viable candidates for a job.
As the leading, and sadly, the only black representative at the executive level of football, Ferdinand’s words should resonate with us as supporters. For the game to achieve true equality, the game’s leadership has to be held to account. Whilst we must hold football’s leadership accountable, we must do the same to our country’s leadership if we are to truly eradicate racism once & for all, we must hold these establishments that have long perpetuated racism to account & make them change their ways for the better.
Thanks for reading today's post. If you’d like to read where I took Ferdinand’s comments from, they’re listed below.
Additionally, there is an interview with Sir Les with Shaka Hislop discussing what we can all do to combat racism. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading today's post & watching this video…
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