Amar the merrier

Kossoff was among Britain’s best known Jews, and proud of his heritage. How would he be spending Christmas? “Like all Jews, I absolutely adore Christmas,” he said.

So what of Amar Purewal, 6ft 2in Northern League striker and practising Sikh? “Class, can’t wait, Christmas is the best time of year by far,” he insists.

Amar has further reason to celebrate. He has just been named Asian Non League Footballer of the Year, ahead of his twin brother Arjun who was also on the three-strong shortlist.

“In a way that was the only downside,” he says. “We’re good friends. I think we each wanted the other to win.”

The twins are 28, youngest of five siblings. Their parents came to Sunderland from the Panjab region of India more than 30 years ago. Their father died, their mother runs a convenience store in Ryhope.

Amar now plays for West Auckland. Arjun for Consett. They’ve appeared together for Durham City and Bishop Auckland.

“We hate playing against one another, but it’s happened quite a few times,” he says. “It’s like the awards, we almost want the other one to win.”

Thus far, however, Amar may best be remembered for his part in Darlington’s resurgence after the Quakers found themselves in the Northern League. One of manager Martin Gray’s first signings in 2012 – alongside his brother – he hit 61 goals in 115 appearances, but was out of the game for 14 months with an anterior cruciate ligament injury that required three operations.”

“It was hard,” he recalls. “Martin Gray was very good, fixed me up with lots of physio, but all I wanted to do was play. After the first operation I couldn’t straighten my leg. They did another one to remove scar tissue and when that got infected I had to have a third. It’s just good to be fit again.”

We meet over coffee – it’s awfully cold outside – at a pub on the Doxford International Business Park in Sunderland. Amar’s winding down for the holidays from his job as a school sports instructor for the city council; Arjun does the same.

Their father, says Amar, was more of a cricket enthusiast. “We just started playing football, I think everyone did around our way. My mum used to run us all over the place.”

Throughout his career, happily, there’s been no evidence of racism. “They might say things in the crowd, but I’ve never heard it. I’m just another Sunderland lad.”

His accolade owed much to his appearances for Panjab in the 2016 ConIFA World Cup, billed as a competition for “countries, sub-national entities, stateless peoples and ethnic minorities not affiliated to FIFA.”

Though he’s only twice been to India, the first occasion when he was seven, eligibility for the Panjab is clearly much more than what might be termed a Jack Charlton connection.

His seven goals, including two hat-tricks, took Panjab to the final, losing on penalties to Abkhazia, a region of Armenia. He pulls out his phone to check the spelling.

“I was really proud to represent the Panjab, my father’s homeland. I didn’t think the award would matter so much, but afterwards I was quite excited. It was a great night, a great buzz, Sky Sports there and all sorts.”

He twinkles like a festive fir, looks forward to West Auckland’s Boxing Day derby with Shildon and, afterwards, to continuing the Christmas celebration at his in-laws in Birmingham.

On January 6 they’re at Stockton Town in the last 32 of the FA Vase, a competition in which West have twice lost in recent finals. “I think people are aware of that,” says Amar. “If we can beat Stockton there’s no reason we can’t go all the way.

“There are some exciting times ahead, but right now I’m looking forward to Christmas.”

ConIFA – strictly politically neutral – was formed in 2013 by Per-Anders Blind, a referee who grew up in Swedish Lapland. “I was raised in a minority community where people are always looking down on you,” he said in a recent interview. “If you are an underdog, you have to fight for the right to exist.”

In the early days, says Blind, the demands were so great that he had to restrict himself to one meal a day and his children went without Christmas presents.

The first “World Cup” was held in 2014, attracting 12 entries, Panjab among the more familiar. Other ConFIA teams now include Iraqi Kurdistan, Felvidea (part of Hungary) and Tamil Eelam, from southern Asia.

Ellin Vannin might find the venue a little closer to home: it’s the Manx name for the Isle of Man.

The 2016 competition was in Russia – “a great experience,” says Amar. “It’s hard to make a comparison, but a lot of our lads could play in Conference North, as I did with Darlington. In the final we led 1-0 until the 87th minute. I still don’t know how we got beat on penalties.”

After Padama and Barawa, Szekely Land and South Ossettia, ConIFA has a new member: Yorkshire. After FIFA there’s YIFA. Honest.

The Yorkshire International Football Association was formed earlier this year, though whether representing a sub-national entity or a county of stateless people is uncertain.

“It’s a bit of a reflection of Yorkshire’s strong leaning towards devolution at the moment,” founding chairman Philip Hegarty told the Yorkshire Post in October.

Known as the Vikings, already affiliated to ConIFA, the team will play home games in the multi-cultural setting of Hemsworth Miners’ Welfare and away fixtures goodness knows where.

The mission statement seeks to reflect the white rose success of the Tour de France – “raise the profile of the region, create opportunities for wealth sharing, cultural recognition and further empowerment of the Yorkshire brand.”

So far as reasonably may be ascertained, Yorkshire have yet to play a game.

It would be churlish – and, indeed, disloyal – to write of football with an Indian sub-continental connection and not mention From Delhi to the Den. It’s the autobiography of Stephen Constantine, now in his second spell as manager of the Indian national team and hitherto a national team manager from Malawi to Nepal and several other countries in between.

Like most autobiographies, of course, the book has a ghost who’s done most of the work. This one’s my younger son, Owen, formerly an Echo journalist and now with the BBC in Washington. The Independent listed it as one of the top 50 sports books of 2017: it’s published by de Coubertin and available on Amazon.