Alien in planet red

From the station to the Stadium, Busan was a sea of red today. At the plaza outside the station, they8217;d set up a stage and a rock conce...

From the station to the Stadium, Busan was a sea of red today. At the plaza outside the station, they8217;d set up a stage and a rock concert was on. There were several Polish fans in attendance but the mood, the theme and the colour was overwhelmingly Korean Red.

Young children waving flags, teens with their faces painted, older men wearing red T-shirts8230; they all seemed headed for the stadium.

And so they were. The subway line to Dongnae, the stop where you have to transfer to a bus, was packed and it was much more than the usual office crowd. But it was a happy, cheerful crowd, some of them singing, all of them just grateful to be watching the match.

Once at the stadium, it could have been an Arsenal or Man United or Liverpool home game. All the concourses were a sea of red, every shirt either the official Korean jersey or one of the hundreds of unofficial ones being sold.

But all that paled in comparison with what was going on inside the stadium. From about two hours before the match the stadium was alive, on fire.

After being up with the Gods for the Brazil match, I got a seat down in the pits. All I could see at eye level was the green of the pitch but all I had to do was look up, look around, look anywhere; red all over.

And the noise! First, when the players came out for the warm-up 45 minutes before kickoff. The Poles came out first, they were booed but they cleverly applauded the Korean fans and the boos turned to loud applause. Then the Koreans came out and the stadium went mad. To our left, the North Stand was one heaving mass of red, constantly cheering, chanting, drumming.

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Among the chants was the Pet Shop Boys8217; 8216;Go West8217;, made popular first by Arsenal fans 1-0 to the Arsenal and then Cantona fans.

Every move, every pass, sometimes even a mispass was cheered wildly. So much so, you wondered what they8217;d do if the Koreans actually scored. Well, after 26 minutes, we found out. First, wild celebrations; on the touchline, Guus Hiddink was waving his players back to their positions. Then the chants for the scorer, Hwang Sun-Hong. Finally, loudest of all, Hid-dink! Hid-dink!

You thought it couldn8217;t get any louder. But it did, not even 10 minutes after half-time. And then as the clock wound down, the chants got louder.

Eventually, when the referee blew his whistle, it was tough to say who went more crazy: the crowd or the players. Hiddink embraced his coaching staff, the players went into a huddle, the crowd into a frenzy. Then the victory lap, first to the North Stand, of course, before disappearing down the tunnel.

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The fans stayed on, though. More than an hour after full time, you could hear the drum beats by fans drunk on ecstasy. Out in the streets, where they8217;d set up huge TVs this is, after all, the land of the giant Samsung, the party will no doubt go on late into the night. Reality will come soon enough, but no one8217;s thinking about that now.