This Saturday, Brentford dedicates our home fixture against Ipswich Town to the Premier League’s No Room for Racism campaign.
As a part of the campaign, Brentford is celebrating an individual from the club’s minority ethnic community. This week, we showcase Karleigh Osborne’s story.
A former Bees defender, Osborne began his career at Brentford as a youth scholar and went onto spend eight years playing for the club serving us throughout our time in League Two and League One.
Today, Osborne is the head coach of Brentford Women having been in post since 2018.
Developing a love for football
Osborne started playing football at the age of seven with South Ruislip Rangers.
Surprisingly, unlike many professional footballers today, he wasn’t enamoured by the sport: “I didn’t really like playing football. My dad wasn’t into sport, he didn’t push me into football. I just went and played because my mates played.”
Osborne admits his talent wasn’t apparent to his coaches at the time: “They had different tiers for teams, the A team, B team and C team. I went to train, and they said, ‘We don’t necessarily think you’re going to be good enough for the A team, so we’ll put you in the B team.”
Failing to make an impression on coaches, a seven-year-old Karleigh was told to go in goal, until he gradually started playing as a defender and made it into the A team. He went onto to play for Ruislip Rangers until he was 14.
Rejection and setbacks are a common feature of football. Even at the tender age of seven, Osborne says he would have felt disappointed by his experience.
He says: “I would have been disappointed naturally, because no one likes to feel or be told that they're not good enough for something. I think that probably was the first taste of what football or chasing a football career would end up feeling like.”
Osborne also played with his stepdad’s football team where the men weren’t the easiest on him: "They would rough me up a little." But this would help Osborne grow into the player he’d later become and help him realise his dream of becoming a professional footballer.
The testing times would continue. At the age of 14, Karleigh had trials at Chelsea, Arsenal and Fulham, but he didn’t get accepted.
Before turning 16 though, there was a ripe opportunity for Karleigh when Bees legend, Bobby Ross informed him that Brentford were looking for a defender and they had one remaining place for a scholar.
Gaining this position would not come easy. He was asked to trial for Brentford’s match in the London Cup. Yet before the match, in an unfortunate accident at school, a teenage Osborne injured his head.
He says: “I needed eight stitches, and the doctor told me I wouldn’t be able to play because the stitches needing time to heal.”
Not one to take no for an answer, Osborne disobeyed doctor's orders and played the match against Celtic with a bandage around his head - perhaps not the wisest decision for his health!
“I ended up finishing the game and played really well, probably the best game I’ve ever played," he recalls. "Jeff Taylor, the youth team coach at the time told me I was given the scholarship. It was unbelievable.”
Rejection as fuel
Karleigh went on to have an illustrious career at Brentford, but the rejection he faced early on in his career shaped him: “I had quite a tough upbringing. I grew up in a family where there was domestic violence, so I faced a lot of adversity anyway. I was quite resilient as a kid, but I also harboured a lot of pain, frustration and anger. Whenever I got rejected, it was just fuel for me.”
“So many people have doubted me on my way in football. So I felt like it's just another person saying no. One thing that my mum instilled in me, is that no matter how many times you get knocked down, you have to get back up.”
As well as resilience, Osborne has learnt to be adaptable to his surroundings coming from a diverse background: “I grew up in Northolt, an area with predominantly white people. But I then moved to Southall which is predominantly an Asian area. I’ve always been able to adapt.
“I’ve had quite a diverse upbringing growing up in two cultures. My stepdad is also White, so half my family are White, while the other is Caribbean.”
Despite this, Osborne did unfortunately hear and experience racism. He says: “The blatant racist comments would get called out, but a lot of time comments get thrown around as banter. In many situations, they would be perceived as potentially racist or have a racial element.
“For me there were little things, like when I was chosen to play small sided training games against England in the Rest of the World team, but I was born in England.”
With his experiences, Karleigh believes there is an important place for campaigns like No Room for Racism. He says, “Racism doesn't belong in football. It’s a societal problem, not a football problem.”
Using his experiences to help others
Utilising his own experiences in football, Osborne is keen to use his own learnings to support others.
He is particularly passionate about supporting young people to fulfil their potential, a reason why he manages Brentford Women: “I always struggled with this idea that if a girl played football, we were just happy that she played football. There was no expectation, no one was encouraging achievement. Whereas for boys, they were pushed to be the best version of themselves.
“Managing the women's team has allowed me to give back from what I have. I'm probably a bit of a rarity - an ex-professional footballer who is male in the women's game. My wife also played football, and I think that helped me connect with the team”
As well as this, Osborne has his own football academy where he supports approximately 150 young children who want to develop in football and chase their dreams.
With his roles in football, Osborne continues to take the skills and learnings he gained coming up in football and sharing them with young people. With his adversity, he shows just how rejection and setbacks can help us to not only find our way but help others.