Kolkata sings for Messi as World Cup fever takes hold

Greatest football city in South Asia

Fans as different as the Biswas and Patra families show why Messi holds a special place in Kolkata: It is not just because of his own brilliance, but because Kolkata’s football fans bring a particular kind of intelligence, devotion and deep sporting culture to the relationship. That is what gives Messi’s appeal in the city its particular force.

Enamoured with football since the 1890s, Kolkata is arguably the greatest footballing city never represented at a World Cup by a national team. That absence lends its fandom a distinctive intensity: supporters, rather than players, become the most visible expression of footballing excellence in India. It also carries a persistent undertone of ruefulness — especially among older fans, many of whom doubt they will see India reach a World Cup in their lifetime.

On the atlas, one would have to travel as far as 4,000 kilometres west to Doha, Qatar, or east to Seoul, South Korea, to find a city where football is so much a part of the fabric of everyday life and public memory.

As the great Indian footballer and Olympian Subimal “Chuni” Goswami (1938-2020) once said, “Together with literature and the arts, it is football that has made Kolkata distinctive and special to the rest of the country”.

Like many other entities in India today – the railways, Westminster-style parliamentary democracy, the English language itself – football came to India and Kolkata as part of the complicated cultural legacy of empire. Like cricket, the only sport in which India is today a major world power, football appeared in the second half of the 19th century and was played almost entirely by British teams.

The new game caught on swiftly, especially in Bengal, the capital of British India between 1772 and 1911. In 1888, the Durand Cup club competition was inaugurated in India. Today it is the world’s third-oldest football tournament and the oldest in Asia. The 135th edition will kick off this year in Kolkata on July 26 – a week after the World Cup final – and will be played entirely in the east of the country, where the following for Indian football is strongest.

Although seen as an alien sport for the first few decades of its existence in India, football had a lot going for it. It was easy to play and required nothing more than a ball and open space. Then, as now, teams could make up with organisation and strategy what they might lack in skill. The major Indian football clubs were all born in Kolkata in the span of a few decades: Mohun Bagan in 1889; Mohammedan Sporting in 1891; and East Bengal in 1924.

Indian football soon evolved with an independent style. Most footballers played barefoot, with their feet wrapped in bandages, which they felt allowed for a better “touch” on the ball than playing with boots as the British did. Perhaps this explains Kolkata’s subsequent love for la joga bonito, the idea of the beautiful game played with creativity, theatricality, lots of dribbling and a touch of arrogance.

The sport also won over unlikely hearts, such as that of fiery Bengali intellectual and Hindu revivalist Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), one of the few whose name is treated even more reverentially in Kolkata today than Messi’s.

Taking the metro to the 85,000-capacity Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan (popularly known as the Salt Lake Stadium), the city’s premier football venue, passengers see a quote by Vivekananda posted on the station wall: “You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through the study of the [Bhagavad] Gita.” The Swami wanted young Indian men to cultivate their bodies, physical vigour and competitive sparks before aiming for spiritual elevation. Only then could they shake off the yoke of political subjugation.

By the time independence came in 1947, India had become a footballing power in its own right. With the end of the British Raj, Kolkata’s footballing allegiances shifted towards Brazil, whose cavalier and irreverent spirit spoke to postcolonial aspirations globally.

In 1950, India was one of 16 teams invited by FIFA to take part in that year’s World Cup in Brazil. But the All India Football Federation declined the invitation and India has not qualified for the tournament since. Still, for decades after that first invite, India remained a major power in Asian football, with Kolkata as its self-evident capital.