Meet the trailblazing footballer putting Scotland ambition on hold to chase international dream with Pakistan

At the time, the one per cent of Scots from Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi minorities were represented by just one senior player among the nation’s 1000: the 16-year-old Jaswinder Juttla at Rangers. He left Ibrox without making a first-team appearance to join Morton before dropping out of the senior game.

Football was failing Scottish Asians, the newspaper concluded, while launching its Fair Play for Asians campaign. The date was 24 November, 1996. I remember because I wrote one of the accompanying pieces; an interview with former Kilmarnock winger Rashid Sarwar, who, having played 24 times for the Rugby Park side between 1984 and 1987, was then regarded as Scotland’s highest profile Asian player. As he himself admitted, this wasn’t a status requiring him to excel to any significant degree.

It feels slightly depressing, then, to note that the term ‘trailblazer’ still applies to a Scottish Asian player who has managed to make something of a breakthrough in Scottish football in much more recent times. Rayan Mohammed’s dream of pulling on the dark blue shirt of Scotland may not be over but it has been put on hold for the time being – as has been his more immediate ambition of representing Pakistan.

The Edinburgh-born 19-year-old was standing by to make his debut for the Green Shirts v Myanmar at the Thuwunna stadium in Yangon next week until a niggling strain, sustained in training on Tuesday, meant he was in slightly melancholy mood at the squad camp in Islamabad when The Scotsman caught up with him. He had posted a photo of his bandaged left thigh on Instagram with an emoji with steam coming out its nose: frustrated.

He explains: “It was unfortunate, I was training and felt a sharp pain and it was discovered I had a small strain. The medics said it would be a two-week recovery so it made sense to sit this one out.” It means he won’t be travelling with the squad to Myanmar on Friday.

Learning the national anthem

It had seemed something of a miracle this Asian Cup qualifier is being staged at all, let alone it might have involved someone who developed his skills on pitches in the southside of Edinburgh.

Not only has Pakistan recently been involved in an intense if brief military conflict with India, but Myanmar is in the grip of a civil war which has seen the military dictatorship drag young men – and, increasingly, young women – off the streets to force them to fight for the decimated Junta forces. Add to this a devastating earthquake in March which has claimed over 5,000 lives.

This is the context into which Mohammed had been pitched. One minute he was packing up his belongings at Dundee, where his contract has just expired, and the next he was on a flight to Islamabad via Qatar. He now hopes to be included in the squad for the home clash against Afghanistan in October, when he intends to place a hand over his heart and sing, to the best of his ability, the Pakistan national anthem, Qaumi Taranah – or Blessed Be The Sacred Land. At least he now has a little longer to learn the words.

“I will need to do a bit of studying on that first to be honest,” he says. “I am not the best Urdu speaker either, I do understand bits and bobs, but I am trying to work on that. A lot of the boys speak English as well. But mostly it’s a mix between Urdu and Punjabi. I can understand a bit and speak a bit, things like: ‘Hello, how are you?’ But I am not fluent, I will work on that.”

He had stepped foot in Pakistan just once prior to joining up with his new teammates last weekend. When he was 12 years-old, he accompanied his parents to the village near Faisalabad where his mother’s family has roots. “My mum had some business,” he remembers. “I went to the village, and I really enjoyed it. It is a different way of living. You appreciate what you have a lot more when you come back. In the villages they don’t have the same things as we have in the UK. It is a different way of living – no phones, no Wi-Fi, like the old days! I really enjoyed it there.”

He was happy he had a phone by the time Pakistan resolved to get in touch. Communication has been key to his perhaps unlikely call-up. “It was about a year ago actually,” recalls Mohammed. “It was one of the management team who contacted me first. They asked if I wanted to play for Pakistan. I told them I have not got my passport just yet. Obviously you need a passport to play. We started the process back then. They managed to run through a passport quite quickly for me. I got the documents required from my grandparents and things like that and they managed to accelerate the process for me.”

The passport arrived just a few weeks ago, in time for Mohammed to be included in the preliminary squad for the upcoming game against Myanmar, with the tie originally scheduled to be take place in Pakistan first.

However, the election to install a new president of the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) at the end of last month – the first such football election in the country since 2015 – saw the home and away ties switched round, to allow the new PFF regime to bed in following decades of mismanagement.

In 2019, amid infighting and political interference, FIFA moved to appoint a Normalisation Committee to oversee football in the country. One of incoming president Mohsen Gilani’s election pledges is to focus on the progress of the national team, with fortunes having hit a new low when slumping to a FIFA ranking of 198 in 2017, lowest of all Asian countries. “We have to promote the image of our country through football,” he has stressed.

‘A few clubs are interested’

Mohammed’s recruitment is part of manager Stephen Constantine’s bid to recruit young professional and semi-professional players from the Pakistani diaspora as well as those from the country itself, hence the call having gone out to Mohammed, who had yet to make a senior appearance for Dundee. Indeed, he still hasn’t and may never do so. The two-year contract he signed in 2023 is set to expire in a matter of days.

The recent change of manager at Dens Park, with Steven Pressley coming in from left field, might change things - the news was greeted with as much surprise by Mohammed in Islamabad as it was elsewhere. As it stands, however, he is a free agent. He is having to be proactive.

“I am in talks with Scottish clubs, English clubs and a few clubs abroad as well,” he says. “A few clubs interested, which is a good thing obviously. I just need to see what is best for me in terms of going forward.”

In his heart of hearts, where does he think he might be at the start of next season? “I honestly could not tell you right now, just because I have not sat down and spoke to my agent and seen the options on the table yet. I have had my mind focused on this camp for the last two weeks now. After this camp, I will maybe sit down with my agent and see what offers I have."

His last match was a Lowland League fixture for Berwick Rangers, where he was on loan, at Albion Rovers in early April. He enjoyed a productive spell on loan at Forfar Athletic in League Two in the 2023-24 season, scoring twice. Fast and powerful beyond his years, he felt like he was firing on all cylinders around this time.

Indeed, as with Philippe Clement, the then Rangers manager, he had reason to curse the Dundee pitch. After being informed he was in the first team squad for a match against Ross County in October 2023, the game fell foul of the weather and well documented (at the time) Dens Park drainage problems.

“When I heard I was on the bench, I was delighted - I thought this could be my opportunity,” he says. “I believe things happen for a reason. But I would really have enjoyed being on the bench. There were a few injuries to other players and I was doing alright at the time. I thought: ‘I could have an opportunity to come on here and impress the fans and the club.’ But obviously the game got cancelled due to weather conditions. I was devastated.”

His belief that things happen for a reason is helping him process the latest crushing setback. The injury will heal. He knows what will be, will be.

From Peffermill to Pakistan

Football’s crazily paved path has already delivered him to Pakistan from the playing fields of Peffermill, the University of Edinburgh pitches where he remembers enjoying kickabouts with friends. It was always football, never cricket – the most popular sport in the land of three of his four grandparents (his father's father grew up in India).

“I never saw the enjoyment in cricket!” says Mohammed. “My dad loves cricket, he didn’t play it himself, he likes watching it. For me, I just saw a football and started kicking it around when I was younger. That has always been No 1 for me.”

His dad was born in Manchester, his mum in Huddersfield. “My mum moved to Glasgow, and my dad moved to Edinburgh. After a couple of years, my mum moved to Livingston. I am not sure how they met, I think through a friend…(But) they both met in Scotland.”

His father, Asif, is a former Scottish taekwondo champion. “So growing up he always put an athletic mindset in my head,” he says. His dad also coached the James Gillespie High School football team. Mohammed is also a graduate from Hutchison Vale, the boys club where the likes of John Collins and Leigh Griffiths developed as players.

His three other siblings – two sisters, and a brother – were all born in Dunbartonshire while Mohammed has Edinburgh next to birthplace on his new Pakistani passport. He represented Scotland Schools in the Centenary Shield but not at national age group level.

Even had Mohammed been fit to make his competitive debut in next week’s clash against Myanmar, it wouldn't necessarily tie him down to Pakistan. Players can still switch from one international team to another providing they have not played more than three competitive matches at senior level before turning 21.

Still, despite the current injury, he might well have played four competitive matches for Pakistan before the end of this year – they have further qualifiers against Afghanistan (home and away), Syria and the return match with Myanmar to come. There is also an Under 23s tournament he hopes to be involved in this September; Pakistan are in a group with Iraq, Cambodia and Oman.

Appearances in each of those main qualifiers, either from the start or off the bench, would mean his childhood dream of playing for Scotland and following in the footsteps of Celtic’s Paul Wilson, the last player with an Asian background (the striker was born in India to a Dutch/Portuguese mother with Indian heritage) to gain a Scotland cap, will have been extinguished.

“Obviously when Pakistan came knocking, I thought: ‘It is a senior team, I have a very good opportunity here’," he explains. "Also the fans of Pakistan – I get multiple messages from them every day asking ‘come play for Pakistan, you are a great player, we need you’.

“The fans are great and are putting the effort into asking me to come over. It shows just appreciation for Pakistani players. It is a great opportunity for me to get exposure and things like that.”

Like most others his age, he is impatient. “I thought if I was to play for the Scotland senior team, it would be in 4-5 years’ time,” he says. “But I thought what an opportunity to get international games under my belt and get experience now, and hopefully help Pakistan kick on as a football nation.

“When Stephen (Constantine) spoke to me, he said things were going the right way in Pakistan. I thought, ‘If we get better as a nation, you never know what might happen?’ We can qualify for big tournaments, things like that. Obviously, Scotland was the dream. But Pakistan was also a dream.”

Either way, he wants to be an inspiration at home and abroad. On that Scotland on Sunday campaign from 1996, which aimed to lift the lid on ignorance as well as discrimination, he says: "It blows my mind. I didn't think people were interested in whether or not Scottish Asians played football. I want to get the word out: Asians can play football!"