A local resident walks along a mural depicting the Argentine football player Diego Maradona in the village of Staro Zhelezare.
| Photo Credit: AFP

By the time Argentina’s players emerged from the tunnel on Wednesday evening, familiar songs had already begun rolling around the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The crowd came from Buenos Aires and Cordoba, from Rosario and Mendoza.

But they also came with unmistakably different accents from Kolkata and Dhaka, from Kochi and Varanasi, from South Asian immigrant neighbourhoods across the United States.

Every World Cup creates adopted nations. Few have ever been adopted with the devotion that Argentina inspires in South Asia.

The relationship has always seemed improbable. Nearly 16,000 kilometres separate Buenos Aires from Dhaka or Thiruvananthapuram. There is little shared history, little common language and few cultural overlaps.

Yet every four years, countless homes across India and Bangladesh become temporary Argentine territory. Streets fill with blue-and-white flags, children paint their faces, neighbourhoods get together to pray for Diego Maradona and now Lionel Messi.

The connection has outlived generations.

For many, it began with Diego weaving through England in the summer of 1986, turning football into folklore. For another generation, it arrived through Messi, whose genius travelled effortlessly through the television screens into homes where sleep was willingly sacrificed for matches played in distant time zones.

Among those inside the stadium were a father and son from Varanasi. Vipul, who runs an export business, was a young man when Maradona conquered Mexico.

Like millions across the subcontinent, He found himself bewitched by the No. 10 in the sky-blue shirt and four decades back he had to go on a hunt in Delhi’s Sarojini Market to get a cheap replica of the famous jersey. The shirt has now faded, the hair greyed, but the affection remains.

“Television was still a novelty in India back then and the 1986 World Cup was perhaps the first time when all of us watched live international football. It almost felt like Maradona was fighting against the entire world and winning. You had to be bewitched by his genius,” Vipul said.

For son Anmol, his Argentina is Messi’s Argentina. The tears in 2014, the Copa America disappointments, the redemption in 2021 and, finally, Qatar in 2022 are his footballing memories.

Now working in the United States, he persuaded his father to make the journey to Atlanta to support the team they love. Together they watched Argentina overturn England to reach another World Cup final.

They are now heading north to New Jersey, hoping to witness Messi lifting another World Cup trophy.

Football offers opportunities for fathers and sons to discover the same love through different heroes. There are many from Dhaka, Chittagong, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, who have made the same journey to follow the blue-and-white in the United States.

Rupak Saha, sporting the blue-and-gold of his beloved East Bengal, was in Atlanta shouting for Messi. “We want Messi to give us another World Cup. We are all here for him,” he said.

The scale of that affection even surprises those inside the dressing room. On the eve of the semifinal, a Bangladeshi journalist asked Lionel Scaloni about the extraordinary support Argentina receives in Bangladesh.

He admitted that his players remain astonished that people on the other side of the world celebrate victories with the same emotion as families in Argentina.

“They are surprised,” Scaloni said. “Thrilled that a country on the other end of the world supports us, loves us and feels proud wearing our blue-and-white stripes.”

Perhaps that is the greatest compliment any national team can receive.

Argentina has also attracted criticism throughout this tournament. Opponents have questioned refereeing decisions, social media has filled with accusations of favourable treatment, the unfurling of a Falklands banner, repeated confrontation with the referees and opponents have ignited arguments.

Yet those debates have barely dented Argentina’s global appeal.

Inside stadiums across this World Cup, the neutral support often seems to tilt unmistakably towards Argentina. Every Messi touch still draws a collective gasp. Every comeback is celebrated by supporters with no Argentine passport. And among those neutrals, South Asians remain remarkably visible.

Perhaps it is because Argentina has always offered more than victories. Its football has carried romance and suffering in equal measure.

It has produced flawed heroes, impossible dribbles, glorious failures and unforgettable redemption. Maradona gave millions permission to believe that genius could overcome power. Messi showed that perseverance could eventually overcome heartbreak.

For countless supporters in India and Bangladesh, those stories are deeply personal, untouched by the oceans that lie between them.

As Atlanta emptied into the humid Georgia night, Argentine songs once again echoed through the streets. Some voices belonged to people returning home to Buenos Aires. Others would soon begin journeys back to Dhaka, Kolkata, Kochi, Chennai, Delhi or Varanasi.

Argentina’s football star Diego Maradona, left, and West German goalkeeper Harald Schumacher pose for photos with their World Cup Golden Ball awards during the football Golden Shoe Award ceremony held in Paris, France, on November 13, 1986.
| Photo Credit: AP

French judicial officials have opened an investigation into the possible theft of a trophy that was awarded to the late Diego Maradona after the 1986 World Cup and is set to be auctioned.

The prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, outside Paris, told The Associated Press on May 23 that the probe was handed over to a special police unit combating trafficking in cultural property.

The prosecutor’s office declined to give more details about the ongoing probe but said it was opened after it received a complaint relating to the resale of allegedly stolen goods.

A lawyer representing Maradona’s heirs confirmed to AP that he filed a lawsuit this week.

In a separate legal action, Maradona’s heirs are also trying to stop the auction of the 1986 Golden Ball trophy received by Maradona for being the best player of the World Cup that year.

Maradona’s trophy was stolen, say heirs

Maradona, who died in 2020 at age 60, captained Argentina in its 3-2 win over West Germany in the 1986 final in Mexico City. In a quarterfinal win over England he scored the “Hand of God” goal and the “Goal of the Century.”

The trophy had been missing for decades after it disappeared in uncertain circumstances and only recently resurfaced. It is set to be auctioned in Paris on June 6 by the Aguttes auction house.

After Gilles Moreu, the lawyer for Maradona’s heirs in France, filed an urgent request to have the Golden Ball withdrawn from the auction, a hearing took place on Thursday. A decision is set to be delivered on May 30.

Maradona’s heirs say the trophy was stolen and claim the current owner wasn’t entitled to sell it.

Aguttes said the trophy reappeared in 2016 among other lots that were acquired from a private collection at auction in Paris.

Maradona received the award in 1986 at a ceremony at the Lido cabaret on the Champs-Élysées. It subsequently disappeared, giving rise to rumors. Some say it was lost during a poker game or sold to pay off debts. Others say Maradona stored it in a safe in a Naples bank that was robbed by local gangsters in 1989, when he played in the Italian league. Maradona’s heirs believe it was stolen from the bank.

The trophy is set ‘to fetch millions’

Mr. Moreu, who represents two daughters of Maradona, say his family wants the sale to be banned because it believes the Golden Ball belongs to them.

The auction house’s argument is that the person who bought the trophy years ago was not aware it had been stolen.

Aguttes said it expects the trophy “to fetch millions due to its uniqueness.”

Bidders will be asked to make a deposit of 150,000 euros ($161,000) to participate in the June 6 auction.

The Hand of God goal came when Maradona punched the ball into England’s net. Four minutes later, he weaved through England’s midfield and defense and past goalkeeper Peter Shilton for what FIFA later declared as the greatest goal in World Cup history.

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Vatican City:

Pope Francis, at 87 increasingly weak and wobbly, takes a trip down memory lane and speaks of his hopes for the Roman Catholic Church’s future in a new book reflecting on his life and its intersection with major world events.

“Life – My Story Through History,” a memoir written with Italian journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona and published by HarperCollins, goes on sale on March 19, the 11th anniversary of Francis’ installation as the first Latin American pope.

While offering little that is new, the 230-page book is a breezy, conversational-style read starting with his childhood in Buenos Aires to today.

It is punctuated by events including World War Two, the Holocaust, the Cold War, the 1969 Moon landing, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the September 11, 2001 attacks and the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013.

Francis, whose health recently has shown signs of strain with successive bouts of bronchitis, a spate of hospital stays and difficulty walking, repeats that he has no intention of resigning like his predecessor unless “a serious physical impediment were to arise”.

He jokes that while some of his conservative critics “may have hoped” he would have announced a resignation after a hospital stay, there is little or no risk of it because “there are many projects to bring to fruition, God willing”.

He again defends his recent decision to allow blessings for people in same-sex relationships, reiterating that they are not blessings for the union itself but of individuals “who seek the Lord but are rejected or persecuted”.

The Church, he says, does “not have the power to change the sacraments created by the Lord” and that “this (the blessings) does not mean that the Church is in favour of same-sex marriage”.

Hoping For An Embracing Church

Addressing the controversy about the recent ruling, he says: “I imagine a mother Church that embraces and welcomes everyone, even those who feel they are in the wrong and have been judged by us in the past”.

Francis writes that even if some bishops refuse to offer blessings for those in same-sex relationships, as in Africa, “it doesn’t mean that this is the antechamber to schism, because the Church’s doctrine is not brought into question”.

Throughout the book he leans on historical events as backdrops to make appeals relating to current, sometimes similar, situations.

Speaking of World War Two, he writes that still today “Jews continue to be stereotyped and persecuted. This is not Christian; it’s not even human. When will we understand that these are our brothers and sisters?”

In recalling when he first heard of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of the war, he writes: “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is a crime against humanity, against human dignity, and against any possibility of a future in our shared home.”

Reflecting on the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States by Islamists, Francis says, “It is blasphemous to use the name of God to justify slaughter, murder, terrorist attack, the persecution of individuals and entire populations – as some still do. Nobody can invoke the name of the Lord to wreak evil.”

The pope dismisses as “fantasy, obviously invented”, recent reports by conservative American Catholic media that he would change the rules of conclaves to allow nuns and lay people to enter conclaves to choose future popes.

On the lighter side, Francis speaks of the controversial “Hand of God” goal by compatriot Diego Maradona in Argentina’s 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England, which the referee allowed as he did not have a clear view showing that Maradona had used his hand.

Years later, when Maradona visited the pope at the Vatican, “I asked him, jokingly, ‘So, which is the guilty hand?'” Francis writes.

 

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)