EURO 2020: My personal history with soccer violence

Dubai - Columnist Sushmita Bose takes a trip down memory lane to map the long-winded trajectory of the football frenzy and soccer violence

Over the last weekend, a few hours ahead of the Copa finals between Argentina and Brazil, a diehard Argentinian fan forwarded me a link to a report on how, in a town in Bangladesh, there’s been a ban on public television display of the match. The ban has been imposed so that “warring” factions don’t get violent: there had already been cases of fights between “camps”— the ‘Argentinians’ and the ‘Brazilians’ — through the tournament, and some people sustained injuries. All this was taking place far, far away from the scene of the actual football action, but I was intrigued how an event totally dissociated from geography was stoking such intense emotional fervour and leading to physical brawls.

I remembered instantly how in my hometown, Kolkata, not too far from where all this (the Bangladesh ban) happened, the joke is that if India plays Brazil in the city, the latter would feel more at home. Most Bengalis are Brazilians when it comes to football.

Growing up, in my neck of the woods, Bengal, football, much more than cricket, had an entire population in thraldom. A Keralite friend pointed out it used to be the same in her state, but I don’t have first-hand data.

These days, “my” team is England, fuelled by my deep love for Gary Lineker and David Beckham. Since Beckham played for Manchester United, there was a time, in the late ’90s and the turn of the millennium, when I followed the English Premier League with rapt attention. But even before that, in the early ’80s, I had become a football fanatic. At that time, it was a trend. If you lived in Kolkata, you had to be either a Mohun Bagan supporter or an East Bengal one. Both were club sides, and the rivalry (initially) started out as a ‘regional’ divide. Mohun Bagan embodied the colours of those who were ‘originally’ from the western province of Bengal; East Bengal (as is evident from the name) of those from the side where the sun rose. But along the way, those boundaries got blurred, and it became a matter of an undefinable allegiance.

Whenever these two sides would play, each neighbourhood, at times buildings too, would flaunt club flags, and you’d know immediately how the dice was loaded in a particular area. Post-victory, the winning side fans would take out processions, waving flags, beating drums, shouting slogans (the ones reserved for the ‘losing’ side would now be considered pejoratives). We’d stand on terraces and balconies, and watch, like they were some Republic Day rallies.

sushmita@khaleejtimes.com