Our first clue card gave us Robert Rosario, the first British Asian to play in the Premier League, when his team of the time, Coventry City, played Middlesborough, on the 15th of August 1992. Strangely Middlesborough also have the distinction of being the opposing side when Frank Soo, the first Chinese footballer in the English Football League, ran out on to the field for Stoke City, in November 1933.
Robert Rosario was definitely born on the 4th of March, 1966, but seems to have been born in several locations, depending on which search engine is your favourite, as I have found his birthplace cited as Harrow, Hillingdon, Hammersmith, and London. There is also constant confusion as to his first youth team, some say this was Harrow Borough, and then he signed for Hillingdon Borough, and others have those teams in reverse.
His father was an Anglo-Indian, born in Calcutta, and his mother was German. They came to England before he was born.
His first senior side was Norwich City, which he joined in 1983. They loaned him out to Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1985, in which year he also became an England Under 19, but Norwich took him back shortly after and he stayed there even after he became part of the England Under 21 Squad in 1987.
It was not until 1991 that he was transferred to Coventry City, and his first card there is the 1991-92 Pro Set series. That card tells us that Coventry City paid £600,000 for him. He also appears on Panini`s "Football 93" in a Coventry City strip, but his next card is not until Merlin`s "Premier League 95", and he is suddenly in a Nottingham Forest shirt. He had actually moved there in 1993, simply because Coventry City had a run of bad luck and needed the money that selling him would bring.
He did think about retiring at that point, and maybe with hindsight he wished he had, because he was plagued with injury at Nottingham Forest. Instead of that he agreed to be loaned, right across the world, to America, to play for Greensboro Dynamo. It was expected that he would return to our shores but he did not, he signed for Carolina Dynamo in 1997, Charleston Battery in 1998, and returned to Carolina Dynamo in 1999. He retired whilst he was there, in the year 2000, but the following year he came back to manage them.
Contrary to popular belief, this is not his "Rookie" card, that honour goes to the Panini`s "Football 85", who quote his birthplace as Hammersmith, and his first club as Hillingdon Borough.
The packets for this set, which sold for 30p in the United Kingdom and 35p in the Republic of Ireland, bill them as "Collector Cards", though they do say that they are "The Official Card of the Football Association".