When UEFA first announced that there would be a live music performance ahead of the 2018 Champions League final in Kyiv, and that Dua Lipa would be headlining, there were sceptical glances.
It was seen by many as another step into the commercialisation and Americanisation of football - and let’s be honest, football fans don’t like change or going against ‘tradition’.
If UEFA were concerned that their new idea would fall flat, they needn’t have worried. Thirty thousand Liverpool fans bounced around the Kyiv Olympic Stadium to ‘One Kiss’ and so started a Liverpudlian love affair with the song and the singer, Dua Lipa, who now considers herself an “honorary Liverpool supporter.”
It was fitting then, that on a day when the football world united to show its support for Ukraine, Liverpool celebrated winning the League Cup by dancing to 'One Kiss' at Wembley.
“It was really nice to celebrate with the people after a long time without an opportunity to celebrate something,” said Klopp post-match, with a nod also to the pandemic which denied Liverpool the opportunity to celebrate winning the league for the first time in 30 years.
This was the first trophy the Reds have won since the title was won, so even if it is ‘only’ the League Cup, they deserve to celebrate in style, with their supporters.
That Klopp, the players and fans bounced and danced to a song that won their hearts in Kyiv provided a link back to the Ukrainian capital on a day when Liverpool overcome a team owned by a Russian billionaire with ties to the man causing the invasion.
"It's not about the people [of Russia], it's the war of one really bad man,” proffered Klopp. “We have to show solidarity.”
Kyiv isn’t the easiest city for football supporters to get to, and prior to 2018 not many from Merseyside would have visited the city on the Dnieper River in eastern Europe. But that didn’t stop them travelling in the thousands.
Some took the overnight train from Poland to get there, others found inventive flight routes that included Belarus and Estonia. The brave got coaches all 1,800 miles across Europe, leaving three days before the match, arriving six hours before kick-off and heading back onto the coach two hours after full time for the trip back.
Those who stayed in Kyiv speak of the hospitality of its people, many of whom opened up their homes to accommodate fans, with hotel options relatively thin for a European final.
“We stayed with a lovely Ukrainian woman, Katrina, and her son in a suburb just outside Kyiv,” explains Liverpool fan and journalist Chris Williams. “But before we even got to her house she insisted on collecting us from the train station and was literally stood on the platform waiting to greet us.
“She dropped us in the city, told us where to go, gave us tips on where to exchange money. Then insisted on taking us out for lunch on the Sunday after the match before dropping us at the train station again.”
Williams remains in contact with his host. “I sent her some photos from Wembley and she put them on a Ukraine telegram channel,” he explains to FourFourTwo. She wrote back “This lifts our fighting spirit.”
The overriding message from Liverpool fans who visited Kyiv is how impressed they were by the city – with its beautiful architecture – and the hospitality of its people, who had great pride in their country, its freedom and its democracy. “Freedom is our religion” and “I heart Kyiv” read monuments in the city’s central square.
And so, almost four years on, Wembley saw Liverpool fans with Ukraine flags aloft, dancing to Dua Lipa - with Calvin Harris sharing on Instagram a video from the stands in among the Reds’ fans, which Dua Lipa shared to her fans.
Alexander Melnik from the official Liverpool supporters club in Kyiv told FFT: “We received lots of support from the Liverpool Council recently, as Ukrainian flag is now waving above it. Just one Ukrainian flag at the Anfield Road stand made huge news and impact in our country.”
Says Williams: "People in the cities fighting are seeing it and using it as motivation, don’t say Wembley is ‘virtue signalling’ it’s doing massive things for those actually on the front line.”
In times of hardship, football can offer an escape but also solidarity. Maybe football and politics do mix after all.
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