By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Ending its four-day conclave that gathered rapt attention, the Korean Football Association (KFA)'s technical committee finally gave out the white smoke Friday by announcing Busan I'Park manager Park Seong-hwa as the new coach of the country's under-23 football team.
However, the appointment of Park, who happens to be one of the committee's own members and coached only one game for the Busan club after his recent hiring, is drawing ridicule from just about everyone outside football's governing body.
Park succeeds the departing Pim Verbeek, who doubled as the manager of the national team and resigned after the country's third-place finish in last month's Asian Cup. He is a somewhat surprise winner, as many considered Hong Myung-bo, an assistant for Verbeek on both the national and U23 teams, as the most likely candidate. Hong is expected to work as Park's assistant.
Selecting the head coach for the U23 team was an urgent matter for the KFA, with the final qualification rounds for next year's Beijing Olympics beginning with South Korea taking on Uzbekistan on Aug. 22. The football body will take more time in choosing the national team coach.
``The committee members easily agreed that Park should be the first name on the candidate list. We were looking for someone with leadership, experience, knowledge of young players eligible for the Olympics, and who could provide consistency in terms of strategy, such as sustaining and improving the four-back line on defense,'' said Lee Young-moo, who heads the technical committee.
``Hong was No.2 on our list and we agreed that we have a great future leader in him. However, there is a possibility that he could receive further discipline from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) over his ejection in the Japan match, and some committee members felt that we couldn't risk Hong being unavailable for the bench during the Olympic qualifiers,'' said Lee.
Lee said the committee considered a group of four to five candidates but declined to name any of them aside of Park and Hong. Park initially refused the offer, Lee said, and the committee leaned toward Hong.
However, with the AFC officially requesting the KFA for an explanation on Hong and Verbeek's ejections in South Korea's Asian Cup match with Japan on July 28, the assistant coach quickly lost support. Instead of the logical choice of moving on to the third candidate, the committee decided to give Park another try.
Park, who coached his first game with I'Park on Aug. 1, sprayed news reporters with comments about his long-term commitment and plans for the Busan club. Two days later, he found himself standing at KFA's podium announcing that he has made a "difficult decision'' to take the U23 job at the expense of his club job.
``I express my apologies to the Busan front office, players and fans. I have a relationship with many of the players on the Olympic team and had to take the job because the matter is urgent,'' said Park.
It's questionable whether the KFA ever truly considered anyone other than Park or Hong, as they refused to give out the names of the candidates or explain how they were chosen. And the football body's ``ask questions later'' approach is not likely to improve its touchy relationship with K-League, which have always complained about the frequent national team summons.
Park declined to tell reporters why he changed his mind the second time.
However, there are widespread speculations that KFA President and Hyundai mogul Chung Mong-joon reached a behind-the-scenes arrangement with his cousin Chung Mong-kyu, the owner of Busan I'Park. Some football insiders also believe that Park may have received a promise for a return to the club after his U23 contract expires in August next year.
Whether such suspicions have legs or not, its hard to deny that the KFA technical committee, despite enjoying an unchallenged status as the football body's Oracle, has compromised its own accountability by the murky way it conducts business.
``They have compromised their own integrity by going from the No.1 candidate to the No.2, and going back to the No.1 rather than moving on to No.3. They relied on a higher authority to make their decisions for them,'' said a coach for a K-League team, who did not want to be named.
``As a 38-year-old, Hong probably never had the chance, as picking him would irk a number of older coaches higher on the seniority order,'' he said.
Members of the technical committee _ Lee (general manager of Hallelujah FC), Park, Lee Sang-yeop (manager of the Hanyang Women's College football team), Shin Hyun-ho (former manager of the Soongsil University football team), Kang Young-chul (manager of the Sungkyunkwan University football team), and Choi Kyung-shik (teacher at Soongsil middle school) _ are the same group that appointed Verbeek at the helm of the national team in August last year.
Critics argue that the current committee should have been dissolved with the resignation of Verbeek and replaced with a new group.