Brazilian flags fluttered above the narrow streets of Lyari in Karachi long before kick-off. Men in yellow Neymar shirts streamed towards Kakri Ground, recently redeveloped and renamed the Lyari International Football Stadium, as chants of “Brazil! Neymar!” echoed through the crowd.
I was headed to the stadium to watch Brazil take on Japan in the round of 32 match. It was a warm Monday night, made only slightly less balmy by a light drizzle, as my fellow journalists and I undertook a ritual that takes place every four years, come the World Cup. The old city locality of Lyari has long been known as Karachi’s “mini Brazil” — a nickname residents wear proudly.
Throughout the mazy and congested streets, some visibly crumbling, there were small groups huddled around a screen showing the match. Chunks of the area were also in darkness, and several residents said they endure around 12 hours of power outages every day. Residents joked that the silver lining was that most outages occurred during the day, allowing them to watch the matches with their late-night kick-offs.
A World Cup screening offers a window into the football culture that earned Karachi’s oldest settlement Lyari its nickname — and the challenges preventing its next generation from reaching the national team…
AT THE GROUND
Bright advertising screens glowed from electricity poles outside the ground, standing in ironic contrast to the darkness that periodically engulfed the neighbourhood during power cuts.
As we jostled inside, we were swept forward in a slow-moving crush of supporters determined not to miss kick-off. A giant LED screen towered above one goal. It was the most crowded area, with cheers and groans rising in unison. The entrance near the screen had two policemen, who did a quick frisk when they could but mostly let the crowd pass.
The ground was already full, with thousands on the grass and the rest finding space on the under-construction stand, including parts with the rebar jutting out.
Women were almost entirely absent. Only a handful of girls, accompanied by fathers or other male relatives, watched from the quieter corners of the ground. In these same corners were young boys, immersed in kickabouts, with slippers worn as gloves.
Japan’s early goal had the crowd fuming and demanding that their hero Neymar Jr be brought on from the substitute’s bench. Brazil’s equaliser in the second half sent the crowd into raptures, and the noise reached a crescendo when substitute Gabriel Martinelli scored the winner late in stoppage time.
Celebration in Lyari wasn’t entirely orderly. Plastic water bottles flew into the air. One of the organisers and Lyari’s current municipal commissioner, Hammad N.D. Khan explained to Eos that it was impractical to ban water bottles, as people might use them as portable ashtrays and spittoons for the gutka [chewing tobacco].
“We do have garbage cans all over the ground, but people are unlikely to get up during the match to dispose of the gutka spit or the cigarette butt.”
THE ATTENDEES
While Brazil remains a favourite, it is no longer that simple. The younger generation idolises Cristiano Ronaldo more and Portugal enjoys ample support. Lionel Messi and Argentina are popular, but he doesn’t appear to have as much following as Ronaldo.
Nasir Karim Baloch, a former Lyari Town municipal chairman who also served with the Pakistan Football Federation, says that this following has to do with who is popular and whose style of football resonates most with the residents of Lyari.
This love, he explains, is rooted in the idea of jogo bonito, or the beautiful game, as popularised by the Pelé-led Brazil during their domination from 1958-1970. “We feel a kinship to the people of Brazil, because they are also descendants of African slaves like the Sheedi community in Pakistan,” continues Nasir.
The Sheedis are descendants of Bantu people — brought to the Subcontinent as part of the Indian Ocean slave trade until the 19th century — who settled along the Makran coast in Balochistan and in Lyari.
Brazil’s ascendancy in world football was also around the time that half the starters of the Pakistan national team were from Lyari. “But now, we don’t have any players from Lyari in the national team,” says Nasir. The young men at the ground also struggle to name recent players from Lyari who have made it big. The names that they share are of those who have either played at the junior level or in unofficial tournaments.
WHAT NEXT
The last notable appearance by a Lyari resident was in 2004, when Abdul Aziz Baloch scored the winning goal against India in the final of the South Asian Games in Islamabad, says Nasir. He is unsure of who will be the next star to emerge from this storied neighbourhood, or even when.
A large number of current national team players are from Balochistan and the northern areas. A small football club in Islamabad, called Popo FC, has recently gained attention for producing a slew of international talent, scouted from across Pakistan.
Despite meagre resources, the Quetta-based FG United — managed and financed by friends who knew each other since school — has produced three national team players in the last few years. FG United’s manager Muhammad Atif believes it’s because they have local heroes, such as Shayak Dost.
The forward, now popularly known as Shayak Qainchi [qainchi means scissors in Urdu and is the term used for overhead kicks], scored the bicycle kick that helped Pakistan beat Afghanistan in the final of the Diamond Jubilee International Football Tournament in the Maldives in 2026.
Khan, the municipal commissioner, believes that better infrastructure and consistent support is the thing that can help Lyari’s athletes, not just footballers, to make it to the next level. The area already boasts over 170 professional and amateur clubs, with close to a dozen of them for girls, he adds.
But, as Nasir points out, some of the development is questionable. “The turf at the new Lyari ground is not up to Fifa standards and it is also hard on players’ ankles,” he says.
Infrastructure is only part of the challenge. Residents also point to persistent drug abuse and the lingering social consequences of Lyari’s violent past. Most aspiring footballers from the area still have a day job, working to support their family while holding on to the dream of playing for Pakistan.
As the crowd filtered out after Brazil’s victory, yellow shirts disappeared back into Lyari’s maze of lanes. Children resumed their kickabouts in the corners of the ground, while supporters lingered to argue over Neymar and Martinelli long after the final whistle.
The neighbourhood may no longer produce Pakistan’s biggest football stars with the regularity it once did, but for one World Cup evening, Lyari was unmistakably “mini Brazil” once again.
The writer is a staff member. X: @hydada83
Published in Dawn, EOS, July 12th, 2026