Nowadays, it is entirely normal for people to see non-white players lining up for England. From John Barnes to Raheem Sterling via Viv Anderson and Bukayo Saka, there have been more than 100 non-white players who have pulled on the shirt of the Three Lions over the years.
It has become a common sight over the years, and an indication of the kind of modern, progressive nation we now are.
It wasn’t always the case, however, which is what makes the tale of Frank Soo all the more remarkable. Of Chinese descent, Soo was a talented player who played nine times for the Three Lions, but what is his tale?
Soo’s Early Years
Born in the Derbyshire spa town of Buxton on the eight of March 1914, Frank Soo was the son of Beatrice Whittam, from England, and Our Quong-Soo, a Chinese sailor who based in Liverpool. It was there that he was brought up, living close to the docks that his father needed to frequent for his work. He had obvious ability as a footballer, which led Prescot Cables to sign him in 1932, leading Stoke City to spend £400 to sign him a year later. It was with Stoke that he spent the majority of his career, racking up 173 league games for the club prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, making a name for himself as a half-back.
Known for being quick and intelligent, he was a brilliant passer of the ball, which is part of how he was able to break his way into the Stoke first team in 1935. When he made his debut two years earlier, playing inside-left against Middlesbrough, he became the first player of Chinese descent to make an appearance in the Football League. He was praised as being Stoke City’s standout performer, in spite of the fact that the club lost the game 6-1. In fact, he lost his first three appearances, with the other two coming against Manchester City and Arsenal, resulting in him being dropped for the six league matches that followed.
Playing for England
For England fans, the idea of watching a non-white player is quite rightly entirely normal nowadays, but that wasn’t always the case. In the October of 1925, for example, London-born Jack Leslie was informed by the Plymouth Argyle manager at the time, Bob Jack, that he had been called up to play for the England reserves. The offer was quickly rescinded, however, with a communication sent to him saying that they didn’t know that he was ‘a man of colour’. It took another ten years for England to be willing to call up another non-white player, with Hong Y Frank Soo’s talent simply too good for the Three Lions hierarchy to ignore.
Frank Soo from Liverpool died largely unknown in his own country, despite playing for England, Chelsea and Brentford during the war. pic.twitter.com/u9tYHL0uSE
— BBC North West (@BBCNWT) January 4, 2017
It certainly helped that the player had dovetailed so brilliantly at Stoke City with Stanley Matthews, so the desire to repeat that magic on the national stage was clear. He had been made Stoke captain by 1938, going on to play 260 matches for the club between 1933 and 1945, even though most of them were just unofficial friendlies because of the outbreak of the war. In spite of the latent hostility that some non-white people had to endure at the time, Soo was generally on the end of positive coverage, often photographed with a large smile on his face, to the point that he earned the nickname ‘The Smiler’ by the press.
In the end, his versatility was part of the reason he ended up playing for England, working as a full-back, right half-back, left-half-back and inside-left during the Second World War. His first game for the Three Lions came in 1942, making a further eight appearances prior to the end of the war in 1945. If it hadn’t been for the outbreak of the war, Soo might well have racked up significantly more appearances for the England national side, which may have been official, as opposed to the semi-official ones that he actually ended up making. Although he was officially the first non-white England player, his tale has largely been forgotten since.
That was part of the logic behind one property developer’s desire to name a road in his honour close to the former Stoke City ground where he played his game, seeing Frank Soo Street created in 2019. Although he went on to manage in numerous different countries, it was his time at the Potteries that he is best remembered for, being inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame in 2023. There has been no player of Chinese descent who has made an appearance for the Three Lions in the years since Soo’s death in 1991.