‘They’re defeating nations who occupied’: inside Bangladesh’s World Cup love affair with Argentina and Brazil

When Shahidul Partha was growing up in Kulkandi, Bangladesh in the early 2000s, many of the villagers watched World Cup matches on his family’s property. Upwards of 80 people piled into his front yard to watch the action on a 14in black-and-white TV, run by battery and one of the only sets in the area. To calm themselves, they sipped on milk tea and ate biscuits. The crowd cheered whenever Brazil or Argentina scored.

“It was a very nice moment and it was like they were playing with the players,” 35-year-old Partha says. He now lives in Hatfield, Pennsylvania and works as a software engineer, as well as a commissioner for the township and other local governments.

“When it is a goal, everyone is screaming loudly,” he says. “Everyone is excited, people are shouting, like: ‘Go, go, make it go.’ Sometimes they give directions: ‘Go this side, go this side.’”

Living thousands of miles away from Bangladesh, Partha continues to root for Brazil because, paradoxically, it reminds him of home.

While Bangladesh’s national soccer team have never qualified for the World Cup, that hasn’t stopped the population’s fervent support of the game. The south Asian nation of more than 170 million people and its diaspora have long supported Argentina and Brazil. The fandom is reflected in its audience: nearly 20% of the traffic to the Guardian’s live blog for Argentina’s opening match with Algeria on 16 June came from Bangladesh. In Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh, a Brazil superfan recently painted his house green and yellow to commemorate the nation’s flag and adorned the facade with murals of soccer players. Bangladeshi Americans say that supporting South American teams helps connect them with their culture and heritage, and serves as a reminder of their home nation’s independence.

After Bangladesh’s independence from West Pakistan in 1971, the burgeoning nation’s broadcasting infrastructure slowly improved. Bangladeshi support for Brazil originated in the 1970s, when Pelé was at the peak of his international fame. As citizens of a newly formed nation, Bangladeshis related to the formerly colonized Brazilians and Pelé’s transcendence from poverty. Mehedi Farhana recalls her third-grade history textbook in the 1980s detailing Pelé’s early struggles in life and ultimate success.

“We are in that time, a third-world country. We are trading minimum resources, but we want to prove to the world that we can do it,” says 48-year-old Farhana, an associate pharmacist born in Bangladesh who now lives in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. She and her family are lifelong Brazil fans. Farhana remembers waking up in the middle of the night to watch Brazil compete in World Cups when she was growing up in Bangladesh. She and others who lived in Bangladesh in the 1970s and 1980s could relate to the socioeconomic status of Brazilians. “They are the same like that, they’re poor, they don’t have great resources,” Farhana says, “but still they can prove they can do it.”

By the 1980s, there was a surge in color TV ownership throughout Bangladesh. Most Bangladeshis watched the World Cup for the first time in 1986, when the state-owned TV network, Bangladesh Television (BTV), broadcast the tournament live. They were enthralled with Argentina and Brazil during that tournament, an experience that cemented a long-lasting cultural obsession that has spanned generations and nations.

In the quarter-finals of the 1986 tournament, Argentina defeated England, which had colonized the region now known as Bangladesh for nearly 200 years. During that game, Argentina’s star player, Diego Maradona, scored a goal that became known as the “hand of god”, which Bangladeshis still gush over.

“These big stars are coming up, and they’re defeating the nations who occupied before,” said Onyx Chowdhury, a 40-year-old Bangladeshi American who lives in Long Island, New York. “In a match of soccer, that is something that definitely played a role in people’s hearts.”

Chowdhury sees a generational divide between Argentina and Brazil fans of Bangladeshi origin. While his entire immediate family are Argentina fans, his mom’s family who are older, root for Brazil.

“The older generation, they will bring up Pelé, because the 70s was Pelé’s era, and then Maradona was in the 80s. And now, obviously, my generation has the [Lionel] Messi era, so it’s just been moving further down and down.”

The 1986 World Cup also came during a time of political tension in Bangladesh. The country was under martial law for several years in the 1970s and 1980s. Ibrahim Chowdhury, a journalist and writer for 40 years, was an activist who had recently graduated from university in Bangladesh at the time. He was part of an international group who supported the labor movement and were hiding from the police. Soccer offered him a reprieve from oppressive rule.

“We were fighting against the autocracy of military government. At that time that was the only entertainment that came in. We gathered together and the police were looking [for us], and we were watching football,” Ibrahim Chowdhury says. One of his friends kept watch outside for the police as he and others watched the game. “All the political movement before this froze for the whole World Cup … it was a very memorable moment.”

Now the 65-year-old, who lives in North Brunswick, New Jersey, is fulfilling a lifelong dream of participating in the World Cup in person. He secured a volunteer position to greet fans and provide them with directions at World Cup matches at this summer’s tournament.

“I had a fascination to cover it as a journalist … but I couldn’t get a chance,” Ibrahim Chowdhury says. “So this opportunity in the United States, Canada or Mexico came up, I applied for both the journalist pass and for the volunteerism, and I got [the volunteer pass].”

In Paterson, New Jersey, which has one of the largest Bangladeshi-American populations in the United States outside New York City, a local Bangladeshi American soccer team mostly supports Argentina. Hundreds of males ranging from 14 to 35 years old have participated in the Bangladeshi American Sports League since it was founded in 2018.

“It’s like an emotion to Bangladeshi people,” the league’s secretary, Monsur Latif, says about the two South American teams. “They don’t see Brazil or Argentina as a different team. If you speak with them, it’s more like it’s ‘us’. Even though none of us … have been to any of those countries, the emotion is always there.”

The 34-year-old engineer identifies as a hardcore Argentina fan. He loves their sky blue and white jersey and cherishes the memories of watching the team with his brothers as a youth. “It’s the style of their game,” Latif said. “Everything is perfect.”

Throughout the month, members of the Bangladeshi American community have hosted watch parties at their houses for Brazil and Argentina. Even though he’s an Argentina fan, Latif rooted for Brazil as they defeated Haiti on 19 June at a party at his friend’s house.

While Latif and Onyx Chowdhury were born after the 1986 World Cup, they grew up hearing about Maradona’s moves as though it was a family legend passed down through the generations. Onyx Chowdhury is now instilling the fandom in his young son.

“My son’s getting forced into it too,” Onyx Chowdhury says. He has been dressing his one-year-old in an Argentina jersey to capture photos of the up-and-coming fan.

“Through fandom,” Onyx Chowdhury says, “there’s some sort of connection to where you’re originally from.”