Roger Verdi (Rajinder Singh Virdi)

Roger Verdi

Roger Verdi Could Have Been The First Asian Player To Play Top-Level Football In England

Roger Verdi ( ਰਜਿੰਦਰ ਸਿੰਘ ਵਿਰਦੀ Rajinder Singh Virdi, born 1953) is an English retired professional footballer who spent his entire career in North America, making over 100 league appearances in the North American Soccer League.

According to Verdi, the highlight of his career came in 1977 when St. Louis Stars played against an all-star New York Cosmos during which he was asked to defend the best player of football back then, Pele.

Even at 34, football came naturally to the legend but Verdi stuck to the man like white on rice which made Pele a bit agitated and led him to ask out loud: 'Are we married?'. Chuckling, Verdi replied, “Yes, but we're getting divorced at full-time!”

The Sikh athlete was so good that former Bayern Munich coach 

Dettmar Cramer told him that he would have been a Bundesliga-level 

player had he been playing in Germany. 

He was also recommended to play for Tottenham Hotspur by his former teammate, Graeme Souness, back in the day.

He might’ve been a standard-bearer for a demographic criminally underrepresented in British football. An unlikely star of Sikh heritage in an era when British Asians were virtually absent from the game. After his playing career ended he moved into coaching, holding assistant coaching positions with Athlone Town FC, Stockport County, Phoenix Inferno and Cleveland Cobras. Other coaching positions include Co-director for Hubert Vogelsinger Soccer Academy in Texas, Connecticut and California and has been the Technical Director for youth clubs in Washington, New Mexico. He joined DFW Tornados as a coach in 2010. He is also the owner of the Roger Verdi International Soccer Academy.