Football culture: Ukraine

The increased interest in football accompanying UEFA EURO 2012 and the building of some handsome new stadia is helping football in Ukraine to return as an activity for all the family.

Terrace culture
Ukraine's most popular sport had a heyday of sorts in the time of the Soviet Union, when football matches were regarded as days out for the whole family and workplaces, and 'brekhalivky' (chatting places) clustered around stadiums for fans to discuss the game. Crowds for big FC Dynamo Kyiv fixtures regularly topped 100,000, with tickets changing hands on the black market for the equivalent of a month's wages. Hard financial times in the wake of the break-up of the USSR hit football hard, but new venues in Kyiv, Donetsk, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhya are ushering in a renaissance on the terraces.

Key derbies
FC Dynamo Kyiv v FC Shakhtar Donetsk – the game between Ukraine's two most successful clubs

FC Dynamo Kyiv v FC Chornomorets Odesa – the biggest derby of the Soviet era, thanks to Chornonorets' strong links to the Moscow clubs', Dynamo's bitter rivals at the time

FC Metalist Kharkiv v FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk – the most passionate game in the east of Ukraine

FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk v FC Metalurh Zaporizhya – the game that brings together the biggest teams in the two of the main cities on the Dnepr, Ukraine's greatest river

FC Karpaty Lviv v FC Volyn Lutsk – the Galytsko-Volynske derby, western Ukraine's biggest fixture

Good luck charms
Like in Poland, players make a point of not shaving on matchdays, with other common superstitions including not speaking on the phone before the game and not stepping on to the pitch on the wrong foot. Valeriy Lobanovskiy, Dynamo and Ukraine's most celebrated coach, avoided stepping on lines (on the pitch or the pavement), always waited in the same place for the referees and players to take to the pitch and forbade the club's bus driver from reversing on the way to the stadium. His many coaching pupils have helped spread these lucky habits.

Songs and dances
Listen out for the following fan favourites when watching Ukrainian sides in action:

"Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy ni slava ni volya" (Ukraine's glory and freedom have not yet perished) – Ukraine's national anthem remains the most popular song at matches

"Chervona Ruta" (Red Rue) – a famous Ukrainian song about a shrub sung when a team is playing particularly well

"Lenta za lentoyu" (Machine-gun belt after machine-gun belt) – a patriotic Ukrainian song used to lift the team's spirits

"Slava Ukrayini! Geroyam Slava!" (Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes!) – the most common back-and-forth between groups of fans at a stadium

"Virymo v komandu" (We believe in the team) – sung to encourage a losing side

Wit and wisdom
"In a hundred or a thousand years, I don't know when, football will reach absolute interchangibility; there will be players who can do every job on the pitch perfectly wherever they find themselves at this or that moment in a match" – Lobanovskiy predicts the advent of Josep Guardiola's FC Barcelona team

"The game will be forgotten; only the result will be remembered" – Lobanovskiy's usual response when his team were accused of putting results ahead of performances

"Don't expect justice in football" – former Chornomorets and Shakhtar Donetsk coach Viktor Prokopenko explains why the better team does not always win

"We don't call up players for their beautiful eyes" – national-team coach Oleg Blokhin explains one of the main principles of his selection policy

"If you don't score, you will concede" – a favourite coaches and commentators' cliche explaining how sides who miss gilt-edged chances often go on to let in a goal straight away

What on earth is that?
Dynamo learned they had won their first Soviet title as fans trooped away from a disappointing 0-0 draw against Avangard Kharkiv (now Metalist) on 17 October 1961, when the stadium announcer confirmed that their only league rivals, FC Torpedo Moskva, had lost. A spontaneous celebration followed with fans lighting torches made of newspapers and magazines; apart from being a fire hazard, this was regarded as an unseemly display in a society where extreme displays of emotion were not welcome, but is now regarded as the first real flowering of terrace culture in Ukraine.