Of all the strange things you have heard about the World Cup, all the weird and wonderful stories about how this daft old sport can influence human behaviour, is there anything quite so perplexing as what is currently happening in Bangladesh?
“It can be crazy,” says Soumik Saheb, one of the Bangladeshis who admits having the symptoms of what appears to be a very strong dose of World Cup fever. “Every time there is an Argentina game, big screens are put up. It’s like a festival.
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“It doesn’t matter that the games often don’t start until 1am for us, because of the time difference. There are tens of thousands of people outside and, if Argentina win, it ends each time with a rally through the streets. It’s 3am, everyone is asleep, all the shops are closed. But everyone is woken. Even the dogs who literally have nobody but themselves past midnight must be thinking, ‘Why on earth are so many people on the streets at this time?’.”
This, you quickly learn, is not your usual story.
Bangladesh, a nation of 169 million people bordered to the north, east and west by India, has always been famous for cricket rather than anything to do with football. So, can someone explain why, on the streets of capital city Dhaka in particular, you might easily think you were in a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires?
Something strange has been happening. Rows and rows of apartment blocks in Dhaka are festooned in Argentina’s national colours — sky blue and white. Wall murals pay homage to Diego Maradona. The Argentine national flag, the Bandera Oficial de Ceremonia, is everywhere — balconies, spires, lamp-posts. You can even get an Argentina-themed rickshaw if you fancy a ride on a seat decorated with the image of Lionel Messi holding the Copa America.
Not that this is just a one-sided love-in. Argentina’s football federation has already sent one message, via Twitter, to thank the Bangladeshi people for their support. Some Argentine journalists have started posting tweets in Bengali, as well as Spanish, so their new audience can find out the latest news.
Lionel Scaloni, Argentina’s manager, has been asked about it in news conferences. “What the national team shirt transmits is crazy,” he said. “It makes us proud that the people in Bangladesh are supporting Argentina like this.”
Even more curiously, Argentina’s fans have decided to do something in return.
One set up a Facebook group last Friday to support Bangladesh’s national cricket team. It is called “Fans Argentinos de la seleccion de cricket de Bangladesh” and its members have spent the past couple of days celebrating the team’s one-wicket victory over India in a one-day international. OK, some of the participants might not have the first clue about the rules of cricket but you can’t fault their enthusiasm. Five days since its launch, the group had 119,000 followers, and the number is rising all the time.
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If you are struggling to understand where all this originates, perhaps it is worth remembering that Bangladesh’s national football team is, without being too cruel, pretty lousy.
Bangladesh are 192nd (of 211) in FIFA’s world rankings, though they have been even lower and have never got near to qualifying for a World Cup. So in the absence of football heroes of their own, the people of Bangladesh have had to find other teams to support passionately.
Traditionally, that meant Brazil, whose matches also attract huge audiences and street parades, from Dhaka to Khulna, Chattogram to Rangpur, and lots of places in between. If you don’t see Argentina’s colours decorating a street, you are likely to come across Brazil’s yellow, green and blue. Often, it is both.
Now, though, one guy in particular sways opinion.
“Because we love Messi,” explains Shahbaj Ahmed, a Bangladeshi shopkeeper who moved to Qatar in 2017. “It’s Argentina first, then Brazil, because everyone loves Messi so much.”
Ahmed runs a perfume store in Souq Waqif, among the labyrinthine shops in downtown Doha where you can buy everything from shisha pipes to spices and football shirts that, ironically, might have been made in Bangladesh. He wears an Argentina one behind the counter. “I have been to every Argentina game so far,” he says proudly. “I was behind the goal for the game against Australia, when Messi scored. It was emotional, my favourite moment so far.”
It was the same at the fan zone on Saturday when Messi helped to put Argentina into the quarter-finals at the expense of the Australians. Thousands of fans celebrated on the Corniche, the promenade stretching around Doha’s waterfront. Many were wearing Argentina shirts and waving Bangladesh flags.
Yet the origins of this devotion actually goes back further. “I’ve been watching Argentina since my childhood, even in the 2002 World Cup, when there was hardly any kind of internet,” says Saheb. “What is happening now isn’t just because of Messi, despite what many people think.”
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The truth, he says, is that it been passed through various generations, gaining momentum all the time. “In the early 1980s, there were no colour televisions in Bangladesh. For a lot of people, the only way to find out about the World Cup was through the newspapers. Then the 1986 tournament came along and there was Maradona — in colour. It was the tournament of Argentina. It was the tournament of Maradona. We were hooked.”
You can say that again.
Videos posted on the internet show thousands of Argentina fans flooding through Bangladeshi streets to celebrate wins. And maybe, some people believe, it helped that Maradona’s Hand of God goal in that tournament in Mexico came against England, the nation that once colonised Bangladesh. Some Bangladeshis had empathy, it is said, for Argentina over the Falklands conflict four years earlier.
All that can really be said for certain is that these guys are devoted.
“These are people who wake up at 2am to watch Argentina play,” says Roy Nemer, the founder of Mundo Albiceleste, a website for Argentina supporters. “People who paint their houses in the colours of sky blue and white to show their support. It’s mind-boggling.
“Scaloni spoke about the support in his press conference, which is absolutely unheard of. There were even people in Buenos Aires who were celebrating the win against Australia by waving the flag of Bangladesh. Imagine that. Sport truly can unite different cultures and bring people together.”
Nemer can probably be forgiven for sounding slightly bemused: it takes a bit of time to get used to the idea that “fans from a completely different culture, who speak a completely different language, adopt a country as their own”. He also makes the point that there are other Asian countries, such as Nepal and Malaysia, where Argentina are the team of choice. It is a source of pride, he says, for the 1978 and 1986 World Cup winners: “There are more people in Bangladesh and India who support Argentina than there are Argentines in Argentina.”
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The relationship is now so firmly established that El Destape, one of the media outlets in Argentina, covered that Bangladesh-India cricket international on Sunday. “From Argentina, we congratulate Bangladesh for this tremendous victory,” the station cheerily announced.
One television presenter in Bangladesh read out the news in the first week of the World Cup while wearing Argentina’s team shirt. Another Bangladeshi created an Argentina flag that is — no kidding — over half a mile long. He and a small army of fellow enthusiasts paraded it through the streets of Dhaka.
In Doha, one of the reasons why Argentina’s fans have possibly the largest and loudest following of any team at this World Cup is because of the considerable Bangladeshi population living in Qatar. Brazil’s fans are also here, en masse, and have huge backing of their own from the local Bangladeshi community.
Almost 2,500 miles (4,000km) away in Bangladesh, meanwhile, special measures are being put in place for a possible Argentina vs Brazil semi-final next Tuesday (or 1am next Wednesday, Dhaka time).
When those two countries played one another in the Copa America final last year, there were reports of clashes between rival fans. Several people were injured. This was not, however, outside the Maracana, the stadium in Rio de Janeiro where the game was actually played. No, these flashpoints were in Bangladesh, 9,500 miles away.
“The police will have to divide Dhaka into different areas,” says Saheb. “There will be an area for the Argentina fans and another for Brazil fans.
“The rivalry is very strong. We are just a long way away from where the games are being played.”
- Follow the latest World Cup news, analysis, tables, fixtures and more here
- Read more: Argentina eliminated the Netherlands on penalties to advance to the semi-finals
(Top photo: Zabed Hasnain Chowdhury/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
