Choudhury is happy to have taken on the status of role model to his community and beyond as the only British-Asian player in the top flight

At Leicester City there is a story they like to tell about Hamza Choudhury. It involves one of his first training sessions at the club’s youth academy and a coach having to apologise for the trail of destruction that the seven-year-old left behind him, throwing himself into tackles with an exuberance that terrified some of his peers and indeed their parents.

The 21-year-old laughs as he tries to cast his mind back. “I don’t remember it too vividly,” he says. “I think I was just bigger than all the other kids back then. Heavy-footed, heavy-handed.”

Everything about the young Choudhury set him apart: not just his size but his talent, his energy and, in particular, his ethnicity. The distinctive hairstyle came later (“even though my