World Cup brings together all different kinds of fans who don’t necessarily follow football regularly or know the players individually. Just an overview to understand the bigger picture and where to direct your pain and anger.
Corruption – Hyeong Myeong Bo
Hyeong Myeong Bo was the coach of our team in the 2014 World Cup and brought together probably the most disgusting performance Korea has ever brought at a World Cup since I was born. Korea crashed out the World Cup without a single win. I don’t want to go down to the politics of it which you can search up yourselves but basically he was named coach again last year in the most dubious circumstances with lack of transparency by the Korean football association. No country in the history of World Cup has ever reinstated a coach that was fired in the first place because of incompetence which just highlights the weird nature of his appointment.
Scope of humiliation
To give an overview of the humiliation – South Africa is one of the lowest ranking teams in this World Cup, has no European based players in the top 5 leagues and has only qualified twice without being the host (South Korea has qualified 12 times). South Africa have in their entire history won two World Cup games before meeting South Korea and never qualified for the knockout stages.
Not only lack of passion and urgency
I see a lot of comments saying its lack of passion and urgency. Whilst those components are important, the scope of humiliation mentioned before and performance level shown underlines that there is a way bigger structural problem. You can blame individual performances of course but the collective display shows again that there are huge fucking problems. by blaming “lack of passion” you are covering up much bigger corruption of the KFA and hyeong myeong bo’s complete incompetence.
3 centre back formation
Most teams play with 2 centre back (central defenders), but ever since Hyeong Myeong Bo has been in charge, he has introduced a formation that has 3 centre backs – Lee Han Beom, Kim Min Jae, Lee Gi-Hyuk. The issue is in order to have another centre back on the pitch you sacrifice a midfield player. It leaves the two midfield players (Hwang in Beom and Baik Seung Ho) very exposed in the middle and harder to play out in the middle as they have one man less in the midfield.
Wingback problem
3 centre back system has fullbacks pushing higher up in a more offensive roles as „wingbacks“. Wingbacks are absolutely crucial to relieve pressure from the midfield and for chance creation. Issue is South Korea has no natural wingbacks – Seol Yong Woo is a more defensive fullback hence him struggling in a more offensive role likewise for lee tae seok. This structural issue caused so many buildup issues and why you saw so many side and back passes between the three centrebacks as our wingbacks are not able drive forward and our midfield is one man down so not able to pass through the middle either.
Son Heung Min
A lot of criticsm has been directed towards Son Heung Min. It is true that he has been going through a rougher spell but in the second half you could clearly see the effect Son has. That little bit of quality to receive and be able to pass forward in the middle at times relieved the pressure massively. yeah the final pass and decision making in the final third was missing at times but South Korea has no natural goal scorer other than Son. Not starting your captain in this kind of match is totally nonsensical.
submitted by /u/Enclop123
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