How a BLIND Russian soccer player became a TikTok & YouTube star

– "How do blind people change light bulbs?" – "How do blind people choose their clothes?" – "How do blind people take penalties?" Each of his posts gets comments full of admiration and support: – "You're cool and the jacket's cool, too" – "You're not a guy, you're an inspiration!" – "Guys, follow his example!" Andrei Kuklin, a striker in the Russian blind football (soccer) national team, has 150,000 followers on YouTube and 250,000 on TikTok. He combines his university studies with training sessions, finds the time to record music tracks and videos for his social media accounts and regularly goes on air to interact with his subscribers.

For the beautiful game

Kuklin has a lifelong love of soccer. He's a supporter not of individual teams, but of the beautiful game itself. He is happy for Russian players who do well. He says he was recently at the Russian Cup final between Dynamo and Spartak: "Eighty thousand spectators in the stands were singing MakSim's song 'Znayesh Li Ty?' ('Do You Know?'). It was spellbinding – enough to move you to tears!"

"I've been playing soccer since I was young – I used to kick a ball outside since I was two or three years old and then, at my grandfather's, I saw a Zenit-Spartak match on TV and fell in love with the game. I was incredibly impressed by their performance. I lost my eyesight at the age of six, but I didn't give up playing soccer. And, at 13, I discovered that there was soccer for the blind and I knew that this thing was for me," says Andrei.

The game was invented in Spain: There can be four players on the pitch, all of them wearing special blindfolds to even out their chances, and a goalkeeper with eyesight, who can give instructions where to pass and who directs the players during attacks. In addition to the goalkeeper, the coach can also talk to the players, while the referee helps them to get their bearings. The game is played with a special ball that makes a rattling sound. When going on the attack, the players shout "voy" – "I go" in Spanish.

All in all, apart from being quite a noisy brand of sport, this kind of soccer is also quite dramatic. Since 2004, it has been an official Paralympic sport: This was also when the first soccer matches for visually impaired players took place in Russia.

Transfer of an unsighted player

Despite the loss of his eyesight, Andrei had a perfectly ordinary childhood – his mother did not impose strict restrictions and allowed him to go out to play and participate in soccer. He went to training sessions on his own, by bike. Kuklin knew his home town of Yoshkar-Ola like the back of his hand and could easily get to wherever he needed. If anything, when playing hide-and-seek, he was at an advantage – he could detect someone running (to "home base") from their footsteps.

Andrei only found out about using a blind person's white cane after moving to Moscow, when he was getting used to his new surroundings. "In 2018, I was already in the Russian blind football (soccer) national team. My trainer suggested that I move to the capital and start playing for a different club. What else could one need for perfect happiness? You live in Moscow, you study and you train."

It turned out that no visually impaired soccer player had ever made such a move before: Transfers in the usual sense of the word did not exist in their sport. So, Kuklin's move from Yoshkar-Ola to Moscow was the first of its kind.

After becoming a college student at the Russian State Social University, he decided to get to know Moscow and got a job as a courier. He devoted several hours between study and training sessions to delivering orders. The company he worked for did not even know they had a blind courier working for them. "The good thing is that I now know all the underpasses, stations and escalators: If ever you get lost, you'll know whom to ask," he laughs.

"Parents should believe in their children"

Andrei began blogging by accident: On the advice of his brother, he started uploading cover versions of well-known compositions to YouTube. And then, he posted a video from a training session on TikTok which attracted 80,000 views in a single hour. "There was an avalanche of comments: How do you play, hang out, live? Or perhaps you take a peek during the game? I started filming clips and the whole thing took off."

Andrei says that his subscribers include many parents of visually impaired children. "I encourage them to believe in their children. Recently, in Kazan, a visually impaired boy came along to our match with his mother: Inspired by my example, he has also started posting online. I'm very happy about that: It means my videos aren't just a bit of fun, but help people to believe in themselves!" 

Andrei is now studying at the Moscow Humanitarian Economic University and divides his time between training, video filming and studio recording. In the fall, he traveled to Kazan and Sochi for matches in the ‘Will of Steel’ tournament that the Russian Football Union organizes for disabled and physically challenged players. He was part of the Russian national blind mini-football (soccer) team that triumphed at the international championships in Turkey. "Soccer  comes first and, after that, music and everything else. Yes, I have a busy schedule, but an interesting one. After all, the main thing is to want something – then everything else will follow."