"Liverpool may have Michael Owen, but we have Harpal Singh."
-George Graham

GOING FOR GOAL: (From above) Singh is on the Leeds United senior squad, Anwar Uddin seeks a pro career at West Ham, and Chopra (bottom) has represented England juniors

When these words of the former Leeds United and Arsenal Football Club manager appeared in a local newspaper, Leeds Leeds Leeds, they should normally have raised a laugh for equating English football's brightest young talent with an unknown, uncommon name. The statement was met with silence containing equal parts awe and anticipation. Sitting on the bench for Leeds United during an English Premier League match versus Chelsea, chewing his fingernails, 20-year-old Harpal Singh felt both.

For the Asian community in Britain, the Bradford-born winger sat on the threshold of history-never before had one of their own aspired to the demanding and dizzy heights of professional football. The English Premier League is the world's richest, most widely watched and the most demanding; Singh's club, Leeds is in the top five of this elite competition.

Until Graham made his famous pronouncement, Singh was unknown to a world in which Asians were only associated with cricket. But now, along with the Leeds United prospect, comes a crop of young British Asian soccer talents: Anwar Uddin, 17, at West Ham; Michael Chopra, 18, an England junior player now at Newcastle United; Amrit Sidhu, 19, at Derby County; Navin Saroya, 18, at Brentford, and another Leeds boy, Ravindra Matharu. Three decades after black players began to transform the English game, is it possible then that the Asians are joining in to take on one of the last bastions of cultural exclusivity in Britain-its football fields?

"Slowly, we are getting there," says Rene Bareto, one of the founders of the Indian Football Supporters Club. Around 70 Asian players are now attached to professional clubs and youth coaching academies. Clubs such as West Ham United, Leicester City, Millwall, Derby County and Blackburn Rovers are working with the local Asian community groups to dismantle barriers between the British Asian community and football. Says ex-Manchester United and now Blackburn Rovers and England striker Andy Cole: "I know there are lots of talented Asian footballers. I would say, don't be discouraged, keep pushing for recognition, the breakthrough will come."

Singh is a front-runner of this group and has never stopped being a free-spirited young man while clambering up the ladder even though he carried the weight of stereotype around his ankles. "I've always known it was going to be different with me being Asian but I'm proud of it and don't see it as a problem," he says. "It makes me more determined to make it. I want to be the first Asian player to make it." When it comes to Asians and football, there are many stereotypes: firstly that the Asian diet is not good enough to sustain a player for 90 gruelling minutes. Then, of course, that Asian players don't have the stamina and speed, that their parents do not encourage sports.

Singh has defied the norm: born in Pudsey, Leeds, he started playing football as soon as he could walk. He began in the back garden, to copycat his elder brother, and hasn't stopped. One weekend during Sunday League football, a Leeds scout spotted a frisky 10-year-old on the parks of Pudsey and invited him for a four-week trial at the club's Centre of Excellence based at their ground in Ferndale. Singh's parents, who came to England from India in the 1970s, have prodded him along enthusiastically.

At 14, Singh joined the youth wing of Leeds United where his progress has been rapid-he played for the Under-19s when still under-17. He even topscored for the Under-19 team in the 2000-1 season. Leeds reserve team coach Roy Aitkin is impressed: "Harpal has overstepped his age. He's growing in confidence."

Singh wants to emulate his heroes, the sinewy Brazilian Ronaldo and, closer home, Manchester United's Welsh winger Ryan Giggs. "I'm a winger, a bit like Ryan Giggs. I like running at players and taking them on," he says. Aitkin is not about to make comparisons but rates his young ward highly. "He is a potential matchwinner who can beat the defence. He is capable of scoring goals and creating goals," he says.

Last September, Singh was loaned to second-division Bury, the team Indian captain Bhaichung Bhutia played for. The "loan"- a player representing another club because his own has not been playing him in enough games-led a lot of people to believe that Singh was being "pushed out" of Leeds. Salim Sidat, director of football at Blackburn Rovers, says, "Perhaps he was in a wrong set-up. Leeds is a very big club. It would have been easier had he been playing for a lower-profile club." Aitkin disagrees, "The stint at Bury has boosted his confidence. He was a local hero there."

Being a pioneer can be nerve-wracking and local fan Harmeet Chahal doesn't envy Singh. "If he doesn't go ahead and turns back from where he is now, it will be devastating," says Chahal. Already everyone who knows just where Singh stands in English football today has one question of him: when is he going to be pulling on the shirt with the three lions on it?

Many young, talented Asians are now playing in youth teams at Leeds. It is a strategy the club, whose supporters have often been accused of racism, must be seen to pursue. Two of their first-team players, Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate, were controversially acquitted by a court on charges of a violent assault on an Asian student. The size of Leeds' Asian population is considerable and the club has set up a development centre in the heart of the Asian community in the Harehills area. Says Leeds United Academy Director Allan Hill: "I believe that to ignore potential talent on our doorstep is a criminal waste." Harpal Singh has thrown open the doors of immense possibility.