Wolverhampton secured promotion to the Premier League top-flight football for the next season after Fulham conceded a late goal from Neal Maupay’s header against Brentford. Wolves have won 28 of their 42 league games to return to Premier League after a gap of 6 years. With the arrival of Chinese investor Fosun International in 2016 and Santo, a former Porto and Valencia coach designed the team’s revival since taking charge last year, Wolves fortunes started changing.
Now the Wolves are back in top flight after 6 years but this unsuspectingly has a reason for Indian footballing fans to rejoice. With Wolverhampton promotion, Daniel Batth is set to become first Indian origin player to captain a Premier League side.
Daniel Batth whose full name is Daniel Tanvir Batth is of Indian descent from fathers side, joined the Wolverhampton academy at the age of 15 and captained the youth team while becoming one of the seven academy players to bag a professional contract by the end of 2008-09 season.
Being involved in the English football at every age level to now Premier League, Daniel Batth expressed his interest to play for Indian National Football team. In 2017, during a season-end visit to India for an aid program with YUWA for girls in India, Daniel Batth met Indian National team Coach Stephen Constantine fuelling speculation he may look to represent India in future.
In an interview to SkySports Daniel confirmed about his ambition, “My dad was born in India and came to England when he was 12 years old. As a product of that, I am half-Indian, so obviously it opens up the opportunity to seek an opportunity to play for the national team.”
But complicated resident requirements and having an Indian passport and trying to play for a club in England would be impeding due to FIFA ranking rules has left Daniel frustrated.
But, Indian footballing fans would be eagerly waiting to see the Indian half-blood lead Wolverhampton against iconic teams like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and City in next seasons Premier League to have a sense of belonging with the newly promoted Championship team.