The four stands at Goodison Park came to the aid of the Ukrainian football players.
As the teams walked off at full-time, the 25-year-old Manchester City defender, applauded the visitors' section of the crowd, which was several of whom were waving Ukrainian flags, which took his side one step closer to their aim.
Oleh Luzhnyi, the first footballer to win the premier league in the country, would sit in front of his television and watch the action on a Saturday night.
Luzhnyi is a decorated player. It has been 20 years since the second double for the club. The 2001/02 side lost only three games all season, giving a hint of what was to come a couple of years later.
During that campaign, Luzhnyi was their number one defenceman. After the declaration of independence in 1991, he won eight league titles with Dynamo Kyiv in the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, Luzhnyi was a central part of the dominance of football in his homeland.
captaining Ukraine 37 times and making 60 international appearances. The last tournament before the break-up of the Soviet Union was the 1990 World Cup finals, where he was injured and missed out.
Two months ago, Luzhnyi excitedly talked about his plans to return to England and resume his coaching career, which has spanned eight years, over two spells, as an assistant manager.
Luzhnyi spent a lot of Saturday travelling between his home and one of the city's many makeshift air-raid shelters, instead of watching the television pictures of his countrymen embracing on the pitch at Goodison Park.
He tells Sky Sports that the situation is horrible and that he wants to coach in the UK.
We hope this will be over soon as innocent lives are being lost and families are being torn apart. A country being invaded and destroyed is all for nothing. We need to stand together and end this criminal warfare.
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The safe place for domestic refugees fleeing the more vulnerable capital, Kyiv, used to be Lviv. Many arrived by train and set up a temporary home or apartment. Even with the threat of a Russian invasion, the American embassy in the city was seen as a safe space. The air raid sirens have become more frequent over the last few days and the US embassy has moved to Poland.
Luzhnyi has tried to keep in touch with his childhood friend, Simon Stakhiv, who lives in London. Luzhnyi wants to keep the people of Ukraine in the minds of football fans in this country because of unreliable communications and intermittent mobile coverage.
Luzhnyi was about to move from SKA Karpaty Lviv to Dynamo Kyiv when they met. Stakhiv moved to London for work in 1997 and Luzhnyi followed two years later.
The people are in shock and stressed out by what is happening, according to Stakhiv. Today we had blue skies and peace, but it was different when you lived with sirens and war. Nobody is allowed outside except for the army from six o'clock in the evening until eight o'clock in the morning.
Luzhnyi is preparing for the possibility of being personally involved in the war.
Everyone can be called to fight from the age of 18 to 60. There are youngsters who were not even born when he was playing who will stop him on the street to say hello or have a picture with him. He will be a source of strength to the people in the city when they see him, because they respect him so much.
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Stakhiv hopes that one day they will be able to talk about something as straightforward as football again, since he speaks passionately about the plight of his childhood friend.
He still supports the team. He would take great strength in knowing that the fans still remember him.
He still wants to come to England. He is a legend, he captained our country, and I would love for him to come back.
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