photo courtesy of | Korea Football Association
‘Hwang Seon-Hong-Ho’, who will participate in the 2022 Asian Football Federation (AFC) Under-23 (U-23) Asian Cup, has finally become a whole.
The U-23 soccer team, led by coach Hwang Seon-hong (54), will be on the U-23 Asian Cup schedule, starting with the group C match against Malaysia to be held at the Lokomotiv Stadium in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on June 2 at 10 pm (Korean time). rush in They are aiming for the second consecutive championship following Thailand in 2020.
It was not a smooth start from the preparation process as there was no compulsory call-out rule. Hwang called the coaches of each team directly to ask for their cooperation to select players, and he also went to Europe earlier this year to hire Kang-in Lee (Mallorca) and other overseas players. There were not many difficulties, such as adjusting the recruitment of players with the A national team, which had overlapping call times. To make matters worse, Lee Han-beom (FC Seoul) was dropped from the horse due to an injury, and Um Won-sang (Ulsan Hyundai) was selected instead of Hwang Hee-chan (Wolverhampton), who was missing for basic military training while joining the A team.
The U-23 national team departed for Tashkent on the 23rd, but even then, it was not complete. 14 people started as a team, and 3 Europeans headed to Uzbekistan right after finishing their team schedule. Five players from the K-League and Oh Se-Hoon (Shimizu S-Pulse) from the Japanese J-League joined the main camp on the 30th. After Hwang took office in September of last year, training was difficult, and all the players gathered three days before the first game.
photo courtesy of | Korea Football Association
It is fortunate to be able to finish the tournament as a whole. The Korea Professional Football Federation announced on the 26th, “Only the clubs belonging to U-22 players participating in the U-23 Asian Cup will be exempted from the application of the ‘U-22 mandatory participation rule’.” Initially, some players playing in the K-League were scheduled to return to their teams after the FIFA A Match Week (May 31 to June 14) was over. However, the problem is expected to be resolved smoothly as the clubs that cooperated with the recruitment of players are freed from the U-22 compulsory participation rule.
Currently, 10 of the 19 K-League players called to the U-23 national team are U-22 players. Among them, Young-Jun Ko (Pohang Steelers), Jeong-In Park (I’Park Busan), and Uhm Seong-Sung (Gwangju FC) are U-22 players who play an active role as the core of their team. Even if he reached the final of the U-23 Asian Cup scheduled for the 19th of next month, he almost played without the main players, but ‘Hwang Seon-Hong-Ho’ was able to avoid such a situation.
A representative of the Korea Football Association said, “The discussion with the players’ teams is not completely over, but we are communicating in the direction of remaining with the U-23 national team until the tournament is over. Thanks to the decision of the Professional Football Federation, it is a positive situation,” he said.
Reporter Lee Seung-woo raul1649@donga.com More articles by the reporter