On 17-18 April 2009 a meeting of FSI coordination group with respect to fan embassies took place in Hamburg (Germany). We are quite pleased that this year for the second time representative of PO “Karpaty” was invited from Ukraine among other representatives from 16 different countries.
Apart from discussing preparations to an FSI Congress to take place in Hamburg in July 2009, the agenda included debates over the project “Fan Embassy go East” – the project of preparation to EURO-2012 based on popularization the idea of organizing fan-embassies by football supporters from Eastern European countries and helping in arranging foreign fan-embassies on post-Soviet territory.
Representative of Association of Croatian supporters Mr Sasa Dupor in his speech mentioned in a negative way about his attempts to cooperate with FFU before the match Ukraine v Croatia in Kharkiv: all his requests regarding Croatian fan-embassy sent to the fax number of Mr Storozhenko from FFU were ignored. Mr Oleh Soldatenko pointed out that it is almost impossible for Ukrainian supporters to buy tickets for away matches of the Ukrainian National team unless they turn only to some definite travel agencies previously chosen by FFU.
Before EURO-2012 the European football community with nervousness observes facts of suppressing in our country work with football supporters. However our colleagues hope that soon work with supporters will be one of priorities just as at the moment the main priority is building new stadiums in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv and Lviv.
Short reference
Fan-embassy is the name that has been given to an advice, information and support service for travelling football supporters, particularly those visiting a match or tournament abroad. Visiting fans can get there a lot of necessary information: places of interest, recommended pubs, phone numbers of relevant country’s embassies and many more. Often members of fan-embassies provide assistance to their countrymen in cases of force majeure circumstances: robberies, hospitalizations, renewing passports etc.
The first fan-embassy was set up by the English at the World Cup 1990 in Italy.
Financing of fan-embassies usually is provided by State budget and sometimes by budgets of National football federations.
In 2008 during EURO-2008 representatives of PO “Karpaty” had possibility to observe in Klagenfurt (Austria) work of fan-embassies organized for football supporters from Poland and Croatia.
