Every four years, Kerala redraws its emotional map. It becomes the land of football as World Cup fervour takes over.
Giant cutouts and posters of players and teams emerge, from urban sprawls to paddy fields and beaches. Tea shops become tactical debate rooms. Match schedules dictate dinner plans. The best of friends argue passionately over games.
Few places outside football’s traditional heartlands follow the tournament with the intensity found in Kerala.
This fascination came under scrutiny during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. With the tournament being held closer to home than ever before, thousands of Malayalis travelled to Doha, joining the large diaspora already living there.
Their overwhelming presence in stadiums and fan zones drew global attention. And a bit of scepticism. Some labelled them as “fake fans” hired by Qatar to create the atmosphere of a spectacle.
Such claims struck a nerve with football journalist Jushna Shahin. A big fan of Lionel Messi, the Kannur native’s passion for the sport took her to Spain, where she took up football journalism and later worked with Real Madrid FC’s press team. Suddenly, her roots were calling.
“I was in Qatar in 2022 freelancing for a media house to cover the World Cup and was surprised to hear those claims,” she says. “That’s simply not true. So I wanted to understand better where this Malayali passion came from and document it.”
The result is ‘Land of Football’, a three-part documentary streaming on Hotstar that traces how football evolved from a colonial pastime into one of Kerala’s cultural identities.
Through conversations with the likes of veteran sports journalist Bhasi Malapparamba, former India footballers Rufus D’Souza and C V Seena, football historians, analysts, fans and players across generations, the series pieces together a collage that is as much about society as it is about sport.
“Initially, I planned a 15-minute documentary for an international audience. Eventually, it turned out to be a full-length one,” says Jushna. “I spent nearly three years researching and writing. Filmmakers Muhsin Parari and Zakariya helped expand the idea. We only began shooting in May and wrapped it up in July.”
For documentary filmmaker Hasif Hakeem, who directed ‘Land of Football’, the project became a journey of discovery.
“The making of the documentary was a very raw experience,” he says. “We kept finding stories that already existed. The giant Messi cutout on a rooftop wasn’t created for the film — it had been there for years. We simply found it. Meeting Bhasi sir, despite the challenges of old age, was another unforgettable experience. His memory has faded, but not when it comes to football. He remembers everything related to games. The memories are vivid, deeply etched.”
Hasif believes the documentary only scratches the surface. “We want to document the history of Indian football one day. Beyond Argentina and Brazil, there is a much bigger story about why people here continue to hold football so close,” she says.
That story begins in colonial times, says Jushna.
Football arrived with the British, who introduced the game in military camps, schools and administrative centres across Malabar during the early twentieth century.
Local youngsters soon embraced the sport, and oral histories still recount barefoot village boys holding their own against — and occasionally defeating — British soldiers.
Unlike sports associated with privilege, football demanded little more than a ball and an open patch of land. It was not aristocratic. Over time, it crossed barriers of caste, class and religion, becoming a sport that almost anyone could claim as their own.
The documentary also revisits the generation that first nurtured Kerala’s football imagination. Newspaper reports, radio commentaries and later television broadcasts brought the exploits of Pelé and Diego Maradona into Malayali homes.
Their stories resonated not only because of their brilliance but because they embodied perseverance and triumph over hardship.
As Rahman Poovanjery, author of ‘Footballinte Pusthakam’ (‘The Book of Football’), once told TNIE: “There was a sense of identification. Pele and Maradona were legends with fire in their belly, and that flame engulfed the Malayali psyche.”
Jushna echoes this sentiment. She believes Kerala’s attachment to Latin American football is rooted in both history and emotion.
“Moreover, football is simple — only a ball and a few people are needed. Anyone can make it their own,” she adds.
Jushna also points to Kerala’s socio-political similarities that the state shared with Argentina and Brazil. “People here have loved the game as an art. They were primarily intrigued by Latin American football and followed it closely through radios and newspapers,” she says.
“The colonisation history and the socio-political similarities people saw as a connection with the Latin American nations. Football is not something confined to the players or the home teams. It clearly goes way beyond that.”
Subsequently, Kerala began producing its own heroes like I M Vijayan, the ‘Black Pearl’ of Indian football. And the game spread through local tournaments, especially the hugely popular sevens circuit.
Today, football remains part of Kerala’s everyday life. Children juggle balls through narrow lanes sporting jerseys of Europe’s biggest clubs. Entire neighbourhoods celebrate victories of teams thousands of kilometres away, while families across generations gather to watch the biggest games together. Yeah, and we do have seasonal brawls and social media battles over football as well. Part of the game, they say.
For the filmmakers, ‘Land of Football’ is less about explaining Kerala’s football obsession than recording it. In a state where the World Cup is celebrated with the fervour of a major festival, the documentary reiterates that football is not just a sport in this part of the world. It has become part of collective memory.
For Jushna, however, Kerala’s football story remains incomplete without its women. “While I was in Spain, I got to work with the media team of Real Madrid FC. It was started by a woman in 1995. And it was later managed by five women, including me,” she says.
“That inspired me a lot to advocate for the need for more women to come into the field. Here, I had faced a different reality with girls in love with football. I found them to be often sidelined — be it players or fans. These days, however, the concept that football is a fiefdom of men has started to break. That’s a good sign.”
The land of football will certainly say hurrah to that.