Bengali Fans Go Viral For Celebrating Argentina’s Group Stage Victory

Following Argentina’s group-stage matches, images and videos of Bengali fans celebrating the team’s victories have gone viral. One social media post shows the sheer amount of support from fans in Bangladesh with a photo featuring thousands of fans watching the game at the University of Dhaka, which is around 17,000 kilometers from the Argentine capital.

This is not the first time that Bangladesh fans have supported Argentina in the World Cup. While Bangladesh’s national team has yet to make it to the world stage, Argentina is almost the secondary national team and has been so since Diego Maradona gave Argentina the trophy in 1986. The reason for this is that 1986 was the first time Bangladesh’s then-only television channel had the rights to show the knockout games live.

While Maradona’s victories sparked the support for Argentina, Messi, with his global stardom and sports features in media, is the reason you get the celebrations you see today.

In the Poland VS Argentina match, it was shown that support from Bangladesh was highly appreciated as some Argentina fans were seen holding the flag of Bangladesh.