Frank Soo: England's forgotten footballer

Soo was born in Derbyshire in 1914 to Chinese immigrant Quan Soo and his English wife Beatrice, who both worked in a launderette. He showed promise as a player while in school and joined Stoke City at the age of 18.

Gardiner says Soo became a household name in England during the 1930s and 40s - his wedding photos made the front page of the Daily Mirror, and Stoke fans regarded him as a working-class hero. He played for the team 173 times, before stints at Leicester City, Luton Town and Chelmsford City.

Alan Lau, who plays for the London Chinese Community Centre Football Club and established a foundation in Soo’s name, says the player is an inspiration to him and his teammates.

“We want to promote his legacy,” Lau said. “His story is not well-known in the wider footballing fraternity. As someone growing up in the UK of Chinese background, to have someone like this as a role model is important. He got to the top of the game and overcame so many barriers.”

Soo played in both midfield and defense and was lauded for his ball control and accurate passing. In his column for a national paper, Dixie Dean - one of English soccer’s most prolific goal-scorers - identified Soo as one of the country’s greatest talents.

Following his playing career, Soo left England to work as a manager in Sweden, Italy, and for the Norwegian national team, and mentions of him in British media soon dried up. He died in 1991 at age 76.

“Soo gets overlooked because his caps came during the war, and because he’s playing in an era when the dynamics around race relations were very different,” said Martin Johnes, a sport historian at Swansea University.

“When Viv Anderson appears for England it’s at a time when race is a political issue, it followed 20 years of large scale immigration,” he added. “Soo is playing at a time when there were probably less than 50,000 people of color living in the UK - race simply wasn’t a political issue in the same way.”

Soo himself said that his ethnicity held him back from reaching his full potential. He told the Evening Sentinel in 1945 that he thought he “would have had many more [England appearances] but for his Oriental blood”.