When former Bangladeshi minister Junaid Ahmed Palak arrived in court on Monday wearing an Argentina jersey, the image captured a familiar national obsession: a World Cup football mania that grips Bangladesh every four years.
Former telecom minister Palak was in court for murder and corruption charges linked to the July 2024 mass uprising. But the headline was not his criminal record or trial verdict, but the Argentina football jersey he donned on his way to the courthouse, surrounded by law enforcement on both sides.
Every four years, Argentina and Brazil flags are unfurled across Bangladesh, to the extent that it becomes a headache for local authorities. As far back as 2014, local authorities in Jessore tried to ban the draping of flags, but in vain.
“It does not look good when flags of foreign nations are flying on your rooftops. We have become a nation of Argentina and Brazil,” said Mustafizur Rahman, a government administrator, in a 2014 AFP report.
The devotion to the two South American rivals crosses the realm of public life in Bangladesh, and enters living room spaces, and decades-long neighbourhood hostilities.
A 24-year old man in Shariatpur went viral on Monday for declaring that he will not get married until Brazil wins their 6th World Cup.
Earlier this month, clashes between Brazil and Argentine supporters turned violent, leaving more than 50 injured.
Beyond just sporadic violence, the fandom often becomes a matter of life and death.
In 2018, in the town of Bondor, Messi and Neymar fans sparred with machetes leaving a man and his son critically injured. A 12-year old boy died after being electrocuted raising a Brazil flag on a pole. At least three more youths died while raising flags from Dhaka’s electric wiring, later dubbed, ‘World Cup martyrs’ by local media.
A Time magazine interview of a local Bangladeshi journalist from 2014 roots the association with poverty. “The Brazil team looks like us…Pele, Romario, Neymar are dark-skinned, so are we. (Brazilians) are poor, so are we, said Ifty Mahmud, according to the Times.
The same report suggested that the love for Argentina has a post-colonial persuasion. Maradona beat the English, Bangladesh’s former coloniser.
A wider hypothesis is that the 1982 and 1986 tournaments were televised for the first time, by Bangladesh’s first and sole state broadcaster. An emotional attachment became passed on thereafter as family heirlooms.
In the Taylor & Francis article “Love ‘reciprocated’? The curious case of Argentina and social media fandom of Bangladesh and India during FIFA World Cup 2022,” Srutayu Bhattacharya called Argentina an ‘adopted nation’ for Bangladesh in the need for a smaller, less recognised nation to merge with a global stage with an iconic transnational identity.
The European Union has not missed taking note of Bangladesh’s frenzy of South American football, evident in efforts to absorb some of the mania and divert it to Europe.
Last year, the EU Ambassador to Bangladesh initiated a program to strengthen football partnership between the bloc and the South Asian country.
It seems to be working, as more recently, there have been instances of fandom shifting out of South America, towards European teams. On Monday, a massive crowd gathered at the gate of Goethe Institut, Dhaka, bracing the rain in Germany jerseys, singing Rabindra Sangeet (Megh boleche jabo jabo) in devotion to their favourite team.
The craze for football seems less of a symbolic attachment to one continent and more of a desperate emotional need to merge Bangladesh’s national identity with a global platform.
