It is monsoon season in Bangladesh, with rains and stifling temperatures for fans, but no heat can dampen Bangladeshi passion for the Albiceleste. Since the last World Cup, the Asian country has become the main stronghold of support for Lionel Scaloni’s team and its talisman, Leo Messi. It would be difficult to quantify how many Argentina supporters there are in this country of some 177 million inhabitants, but Bangladeshi writer and sports commentator Rajib Hasan tells EL PAÍS that there are some “120 million fans who watch football every four years when the World Cup comes around” and that of those “more than 60%” support Argentina. That is, 72 million people, around 26 million more than the entire population of Argentina itself.

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Before he became La Pulga, Leo Messi was known as Coloradito. He is still remembered that way in Rosario. “His hair was sort of reddish. At year-end tournaments, at seven or eight years old, parents would see him arrive and say, ‘Watch out, the coloradito, that number 10, is playing today.’ You knew you had already lost or were going to have an extremely hard time,” recalls Hernán, one of his opponents back then. “We were on a team called Estrellas Júniors and he was on another called Tiro Suizo. Once we met in the final, which was played over two legs, and we won both 1-0. We had one shot on goal and they had 20. They gave us 10 bicycles, one for each of us. Sometimes we talk about those things in the WhatsApp group,” he says.

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