During my trip to Malabar I saw at least 500-600 banners,took photos of almost 300. Every 500 metres you can at least see 2 banners, one for Brazil and another for Argentina, almost all the towns in Malabar have their fan clubs. These clubs (sometimes individuals) spend huge amount of money for printing and mounting these banners. Argentina and Brazil have the maximum fan following. I picked up some interesting Banners. Some very creative,some have high voltage dialogues (thanks to Malayalam film industry) and some vulgar too.
So this is my first pick. An Argentina fan club’s banner for sure. Argentina is shown as the Lion; don’t miss the Brazil, shown as a 'donkey'. Italy as a bull, Holland a rabbit, Germany a horse.
The headline says “The king of 1986 (The great Maradona) and cubs are getting out of African forest”. The baseline “This Lion (Argentina) will pounce upon his preys as soon as the whistle is blown at Johannesburg”.
Epilogue
I was busy taking pictures of this banner and a guy came and said there is an another banner nearby, much more bigger and interesting than this one.He took me to near by junction.There I saw a huge Brazil banner, then realized the guy was a hard core Brazil fan! He smiled and said "We have already won 5 World Cups, so a bigger banner was required".
To be continued....
Sandeep Varma writes for FootballKerala.com **
From the archive. First published on footballkerala.com on Tuesday 6 July 2010, restored from the site's 2012 database. Text as originally published.
Comments · 3
ask this beloved fans abt india ..can they tell atleast 5 players in our team????????
Is it necessary that we tell 5 player names?
even 4????