Virtual Fans Attend Real Match

Soccer is a collective passion requiring an audience, like-minded people, instantaneous reactions, heated debates, mutual understanding, feedback, and active assessments. Modern telecommunications present new opportunities for the unlimited expansion of circles of like-minded people. A keen supporter of Ukrainian soccer, 25-year-old Kyivan Oleksandr Popov, has made a deft use of this: almost a year ago he opened an Internet web-site for Dynamo fans (www.dynamo.kiev.ua). According to long time fan Dmytro Ivanov, this site has become a virtual "rendezvous" for team supporters. The site is daily visited by about 3000 users from Ukraine, Russia, Canada, the US, Indonesia, Austria, Lithuania, Australia, and Belgium - from everywhere there are our fans. The total number of those who have visited the site in less than a year is over 200,000. Site users have in fact formed an informal club for Dynamo and national team fans. The main communication place is the "Guest Book" chapter (known as the WALL among Internet fans) that allows all to express their opinion about key soccer events.

All the bus passengers are Internet fans. They got to know each other thanks to the site. They also organized the trip themselves from beginning to end: passports, visas, match tickets plus the necessary paraphernalia - 2 huge home-made yellow-blue national flags (2 m x 3m and 2.5m x 1.5m) reading "Forward, Ukraine!" and "UKR.INTERNET fans," theme T-shirts, scarves, woolen-hats, and horns... There were not only Kyivans on the bus: several people came from other Ukrainian cities and even Moscow... They met each other "live" in Paris, though they had been in virtual acquaintance for almost a year. Of course, the trip was expensive. And although they tried to choose the cheapest transportation and lodging, the cost is still high for the average Ukrainian. Some of them preferred to forsake their summer vacations in order to attend the match. They went there not only and not so much for their own personal satisfaction but also to make our players feel that they are not alone, rather that they are cheered and loved. They are sincere and selfless fans: to get to the match, they did not try to combine business and pleasure, i.e., they did not time their business trips to coincide with the event, and unlike some of our high-ranking soccer fans, they did not go at the expense of the state or the companies they work for.

On March 27, at a new huge and gorgeous 80,000-seat Stade de France, constructed, by the way, to host the 1998 world championship finals, the 37 ardent and loyal Ukrainian fans did their best to contribute to the victory of our national team.