For the past few days, Bangladesh football allowed itself to dream. A Brazilian delegation touring the National Stadium, whispers of October 6, a five-time World Cup-winning side potentially walking out in Dhaka.

It felt, briefly, like history repeating itself. But history is precisely the problem. Bangladesh has been here before, spent big before, and learnt nothing before.

The question worth asking is not whether Brazil could come, but whether anyone has stopped to ask what happens the morning after the final whistle.

The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) and the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) are now set to formally begin working towards staging a friendly in Dhaka.

On August 24, BFF executive member Sakhawat Hossain Bhuiyan Shaheen described talks between the CBF delegation and the federation's president Tabith Awal as "quite positive," confirming the two bodies will move ahead with plans, with October 6, the final day of the FIFA international window, floated as the likely date. 

It is a seductive proposition on paper. But it arrives at a moment when Bangladesh football cannot even keep its own house in order, let alone bankroll a 90-minute exhibition against the world's most valuable footballing brand.

Brazil are already committed to facing India in Kolkata on October 3, a fixture that has itself become a lightning rod for criticism.

Reports have estimated the cost of staging that single match at 50 to 70 crore rupees.

Due to a scheduling clash with the Brazil match, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has also withdrawn India from the inaugural FIFA ASEAN Cup entirely, handing Bangladesh their unexpected route into the tournament, drawn alongside Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Former India captain Bhaichung Bhutia has called for supporters to boycott the Kolkata match outright, arguing that the money the organisers will cough up from sponsors would ultimately be taken out of the pockets of local clubs.

"East Bengal [Football Club] will struggle because of Brazil. If 50 crore is gone from Bengal, East Bengal will have no investors and no sponsors for the next five years because the money is not there in the market, and clubs like East Bengal are going to suffer," he said.

"Clubs like Mohammedan Sporting are going to suffer if 50 to 70 crore for one 90-minute match is going to go to Brazil."

If Bangladesh's costs track anywhere close to India's, organisers here could be looking at Tk 65 to 90 crore, on short notice, for a federation that has struggled to find sponsors even for its flagship domestic competition.

Sakhawat, asked how the BFF would meet that bill, sounded confident regardless.

"Funds shouldn't really be a problem for a good initiative. Our president will certainly take steps. Support will also be sought from the sports minister and the government. A match like this has to be organised with government support," he said.

The following day, the government's own response was far less enthusiastic. Asked directly about the prospect of state funding, amid the high cost and the country's own economic realities, State Minister for Youth and Sports Aminul Haque was unambiguous.

"As you know, we [the government] are having to bear much higher expenses across various sectors, including electricity and fuel. In that case, we do not have the mindset to make such expenditure from the government's side just for a match," he said.

He left the door only narrowly open, and firmly conditional on the BFF finding the money itself.

"Since discussions have taken place with the BFF, with the Brazilian delegation, if they can bring in various sponsors and make it viable, then we will provide all out support from the government's side."

It is worth pausing on what that leaves unresolved. Bangladesh's government repaid a record USD 4.49 billion in foreign loans in the past financial year, up nearly 10 percent year on year, while foreign loan commitments fell to USD 5.24 billion in FY26, the lowest in 14 years.

A USD 5-7 million outlay on a friendly may not sink the national reserve, but it buys nothing lasting either, at a time when the state's own fiscal posture is one of austerity, not extravagance.

Bangladesh has sat at this table before. In 2011, the BFF spent nearly Tk 40 crore staging a friendly between Argentina and Nigeria in Dhaka, built almost entirely around Lionel Messi's presence.

The intention, then as now, was that star power would lift the domestic game.

Bangladesh's FIFA ranking at the time stood at 139. Fifteen years on, it sits at 181.

The match was not even the populist triumph it is remembered as. Tickets in 2011 started at Tk 7,500 and ran as high as Tk 50,000, prices that priced out ordinary supporters. A similar Argentina fixture in India just days earlier had the cheapest tickets at around USD 30 dollars, roughly Tk 2,231 at the time.

A BBC report on matchday noted only half the tickets had sold by the day before kickoff, with as many as 5,000 attendees there on corporate hospitality arrangements rather than genuine fan demand.

Bangladesh tried again in 2023, this time chasing Argentina as reigning world champions. Then BFF president Kazi Salahuddin insisted money would not be an issue, going so far as to say that if Bangladesh could not land Messi's Argentina, it would pursue his club side Paris Saint Germain, with Neymar and Kylian Mbappe in tow, purely to get Messi on Bangladeshi soil.

That deal never materialised, but the appetite for another marquee spectacle never went away.

At the time, BFF still owed IFIC Bank close to Tk 5.5 crore, a figure that had stood at around Tk 8.11 crore in BFF's 2021 audit report, debt tied back to the 2011 Argentina match, which reportedly cost Tk 40 crore in total.

The bank's chairman at the time was Salman F Rahman, the owner of Beximco Group, which was the financial partner of the BFF for the Argentina-Nigeria friendly and effectively helped finance the event through that loan.

Beximco Group and its key leaders now face major criminal charges and investigations over allegedly laundering roughly USD 97 million, around Tk 1,200 crore, abroad, embezzling billions from banks and manipulating stock prices.

None of this is happening in a vacuum of competing priorities. The BFF's own executive committee approved a proposed annual budget of Tk 61.80 crore for 2025.

Even a fraction of Brazil's likely fee would swallow a significant share of the entire year's football spending, all for one match, at a moment when the domestic league season has already been postponed yet again, sponsorship remains in disarray, and last year's most high-profile commercial deal proved to be false within a day.

That collapse is instructive. In 2025, the BFF announced Malaysian energy giant Petronas as title sponsor of the newly rebranded Bangladesh Football League, only for Petronas to publicly deny any such agreement within 24 hours.

This is a federation that cannot yet secure a credible sponsor for its own top-flight competition, contemplating an outlay many multiples the size of its annual budget for a single friendly.

There is, undeniably, genuine momentum in Bangladeshi football right now, and it has nothing to do with Brazil.

The emergence of diaspora talents such as Hamza Chowdhury and Shamit Shome has lifted expectations around the national team meaningfully.

This year's home SAFF Championship is being billed as one of the most ambitious in years, and it will be Thomas Dooley's first campaign as head coach following Javier Cabrera's departure.

At the tournament's logo unveiling, Dooley made his intentions clear: "We have a dream of winning the SAFF tournament. I think the time has come." Bangladesh have not won the title since 2003.

That is where the real investment case lies, in a team and a coach building something with genuine continuity, not in a one-night spectacle borrowed from another country's schedule.

Brazil playing in Dhaka would undoubtedly be an unforgettable evening for supporters who buy in.

Bangladesh’s fierce love for Argentina and Brazil was on full display during the recently concluded World Cup, with fans earning global recognition for their extraordinary passion and the creative ways they displayed their support.

But unforgettable evenings do not build academies, fund coaching pipelines, or pay off a decade-old debt to a bank.

Bangladesh has already run this experiment.

The scoreboard from 2011 to now reads a fallen FIFA ranking and a sinking loan.

Chasing Brazil now, on borrowed urgency and unsecured funding, risks writing the same ending twice.