‘Clyde Best laid the ground for every black player in the Premier League today,” says Michail Antonio as he recounts the story, from 1968, of one of the first black footballers to emigrate to England in a social climate stained by the fallout from Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech in the same year. “His story is crazy, from having to fly from Bermuda to getting directions [at 17] and having to live in digs all on his own. I don’t think I could handle it. I would probably have been fighting.”
Antonio has just returned from international duty with Jamaica and is in a reflective mood about his career and the challenges he and black players before him have overcome to make it to the top. The West Ham striker has had to fight, though. He is honest about it not always being so rosy.
