On the day Brazil plays a World Cup match, Nasib Mundassery sells fish at half the market price.
When Nabeel Kadooran, another Brazilian fan, painted his ancestral house in green and yellow, his first cousin Rahees, a die-hard Argentine supporter, coloured the tiles in white and light blue. Then, another cousin, Ilf, painted the front door in blue, white and red to express solidarity with France.
Crazy fans
Sounds strange? Travel around Malappuram during the football World Cup, you would come across even stranger things. Welcome to the land of some of the craziest football fans on the planet.
This correspondent’s journey to the north Kerala district begins on an extremely wet Thursday morning at Kozhikode.
You know you have crossed the border when you begin to see the huge hoardings, often with witty captions aimed at supporters of rival teams.
Football fever: Supporters of various teams on the beach at Tirur. Fans of Argentina and Brazil come face to face. A little Brazil fan at Kavanoor.
Banner banter
One banner, featuring Messi, screams: “We are not the team that drank 7-Up at home.” No prize for guessing whom the barb is addressed to (the allusion to the 7-1 scoreline is a dead giveaway).
As if in reply, Brazil’s fans declare on their billboard: “We are no one-man army.” It is indeed Brazil and Argentina that have more supporters, but there are several hoardings pledging support for the likes of Germany, Spain, France, Belgium and England.
And it is not from just the main roads that the larger-than-life sized pictures of Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar stare at you; they are even on the smaller roads leading to villages. Such as the one that would take you to the house of Nabeel at Kavanoor.
“I had nearly turned the house into the Brazilian flag before my cousins could do anything,” says Nabeel. “We have in the family ardent fans of other countries too, like Spain, England and Portugal.”
You could also see flags of many other countries, including Saudi Arabia where many people from this region are employed, as you travel to your next stop, Areekode. The small town is known for producing quality footballers, like former India captain U. Sharaf Ali.
Not far from his home is Thazhathangadi, where you would find an ‘office room’ rented by Brazil’s fans. “This is a place for the fans to get together,” says V.P. Mahsoom, a branch committee member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). “We screen the matches at our party office.”
You could watch the games on a large screen at other party offices, too. At Pappinippara near Manjeri, the offices of the CPI-M and its main rival Indian Union Muslim League are stationed opposite each other and they both screen the matches.
One of the biggest screens in Malappuram is put up by the Kizhakkethala Youth Club. The hall is packed well before the kick-off of Argentina’s game against Croatia. Most of the spectators support the South American giant. Many are wearing the Argentine jersey.
Change in mood
When Messi and his men make a promising move, their fans, sitting thousands of miles away from Nizhny Novgorod, cheer loudly and beat the drum rhythmically. They have carried sparklers as well, making the atmosphere festive. The mood soon turns sombre, of course, as Argentina crashes to a 3-0 defeat.
Not far away, some 18 hours later, Nasib is ecstatic, not because his stock of fish is sold out, but because Brazil has won 2-0 against Costa Rica. “I sold sardines at ₹80 a kg, about half the normal rate,” he says. “Yes, that means I will have to take a huge cut in profit, But I don’t mind that at all.”
Such is the spirit of the football fan in Malappuram.
