The recent World Cup Soccer Championship in Brazil attracted millions if not billions of viewers around the world. Soccer fans went crazy about these matches – sitting in front of their TVs until dawn, cheering and screaming until exhausted – but were they ‘real fans’ or ‘fake fans’? Recently, the NIT Post interviewed students and teachers on campus to find out what they thought about this World Cup soccer mania. Here are some of their opinions:

Cen Ye, who majors in English, remarked, “Girls or young women who seem to be crazy about World Cup soccer may not be real soccer fans. They’re probably just attracted to the energy and excitement of the matches, and especially to the handsome and athletic soccer stars.”

Chen Linjie, who plays soccer at NIT, said, “Some people go wild about these soccer matches because they like to gamble. They place bets with their friends and colleagues and hope to win a big jackpot. These people are definitely ‘fake fans.’

Liu Jie, an instructor at the School of Foreign Language Studies, expressed a more objective attitude toward the ‘fake fan’ phenomenon: “I think it doesn’t matter whether those who excitedly watched the World Cup matches were ‘fake fans’ or not. The point is that they all had a good time and shared the experience with others.”