Both attempts were at practice on the other side of the world, and one hit the crossbar. But his twin brother, Declan, was hardly surprised when Ronan turned to him and told him he’d chip the fifth penalty of a shootout that could win a scoreless tournament final, as millions tuned in online to see his Bangladesh side play against India in the Under-20 South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship. I knew he was gonna do that the whole time,” Declan remembered, sitting next to his brother on the couch of their dorm room at Saint Joseph’s University.
That’s just the him thing to do.” Moments later the ball gracefully splashed into the back of the net, and the thousands in attendance on 3 April in Malé, Maldives erupted. Less than two years after he began exchanging messages on Instagram with the “Save Bangladesh Football” fan page, the brothers were celebrating a U-20 title, made possible by their maternal ancestry, as members of essentially the home team. (Bangladesh is the largest source of migrant workers in the Maldives.) “Flying in there alone was incredible. Like the water’s so blue.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Like we go to Ocean City, New Jersey, where the water is brown, and it’s our favorite place ever,” Ronan said. At the end [of the movie], that special water … I think it’s just Maldives water.” The story seems ripped from the pages of a Hollywood script.
Two kids from Philadelphia with very Irish names who had never visited Bangladesh before their tryout for the country’s U-20 squad prior to the tournament, then returned to its crowded capital triumphantly. They allowed a few days for the media frenzy, and a few more for themselves to explore, enjoy the food and time with their grandmother, whom they’d only seen in the US until this trip. But this could be part of the opening scene for Bangladesh, ranked 181st by Fifa, with nearly 180 million people and, according to the United Nations, the world’s sixth-largest diaspora.
The vast majority of it is concentrated in southern Asia or the Middle East, but there’s a well-established community in the UK, growing ones in the US and Italy, and pockets elsewhere in the West. It’s just about utilizing that,” Declan said. The Sullivans are well known in Bangladesh, the US and beyond, and so too is former US men’s national team captain Thomas Dooley.
The son of an American serviceman who grew up and played in Germany then joined the USMNT by happenstance, Dooley was announced as the head coach of the Bangladesh senior team seven weeks after the U-20 side brought a trophy home. He spent most of the coaching chapter of his life in Southeast Asia, where he heard about “a fanatic country in football” he is now leading into a new World Cup cycle. We need to be a country of playing football,” Dooley told the Guardian.
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