Shakhtar Donetsk Comes to Japan for Charity Match to Support Ukraine

Taras Stepanenko, captain and representative of Ukraine

Did you know that the Ukrainian powerhouse FC Shakhtar Donetsk came to Japan and played against Avispa Fukuoka at the National Stadium in Tokyo on December 18th?

The event was planned by Fukuoka and sponsor companies as a “Charity Match to Support the Recovery of Ukraine.” Before the match, a video message from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was shown on a large screen, and Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa also attended. It was a great plan, but not much information was leaked to the soccer world.

As a result, even my colleague, a veteran soccer reporter, didn’t even know that this game was going to take place until just before the match.

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I myself saw a commercial on a commercial terrestrial broadcast about half a month ago and thought, “Huh? There’s a game like that? I haven’t heard of it.” Then I found out about the game on the J.League media site. However, requests for coverage were slow to open, and it appears that the flow of information was not smooth because a company that does not normally cover soccer matches was in charge.

There are probably many soccer fans who don’t know about this match. Sponsoring companies bought tickets and invited many visitors, and it was said that several hundred Ukrainians who had evacuated to Japan were also invited, but the total number of visitors was 18,114.

It was such a waste for the powerful Shakhtar to come to Japan.

First of all, I wanted as many Japanese people as possible to learn about the situation in Ukraine, which has been fighting for nearly two years after being invaded by Russia. And since it was said that all the proceeds would be donated to the reconstruction of Ukraine, more people should have bought tickets.

Another thing that made it a waste was that the quality of the matches was so high.

Shakhtar Donetsk is a club founded in 1936 in Donetsk, Donetsk Oblast, in eastern Ukraine. At the time, Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, but Dynamo Kiev, a club run by the government (secret police), was overwhelmingly strong in Ukraine, and Dynamo had won the All-Soviet League many times, and the Soviet Union national team also played. There was a time when Dynamo was the main player.

2023-12-19 14:05:18
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