Legendary goalkeeper vows to revive youth football

Goalkeeper Kim Byung-ji

By Park Jin-hai

Goalkeeper Kim Byung-ji, the oldest player in Korean professional football history who retired in July, says his life is much busier now than when he was on the field. “These days, I realize I am retired now, not because I am not running on the field but because I’ve been busy with out-of-field businesses. Now playing on the field has become a refreshing moment for me,” said the 46-year-old Kim, head of the KIMBJ Sports Culture Center, during an interview with The Korea Times.

The veteran player with signature dyed hair made his name with his aggressive plays ― once he charged the field and scored a goal during a K-league match.

Since his 1992 debut with Ulsan Hyundai, Kim has played a total of 706 professional games over the span of his career. He was in the South Korea national team for both the 1998 FIFA World Cup and the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

He says his after-retirement life centers around charity and community work to revive youth football.

Kim recently visited Jeju Island with his 2002 World Cup teammates for a friendly match and raise funds for the region’s only female high school football team, which was on the verge of disbanding for financial reasons.

Kim himself never gave up chasing his dream of being a professional goalkeeper ever since he first kicked the ball in third grade of elementary school, he says, despite physical restrictions and financial problems. “People around me said I was stupid, because I was going after what is apparently impossible. I was small for the goalkeeper position when I entered high school but I never gave up. My family wasn’t wealthy enough to support me, but I worked during the day and exercised at night, playing for an amateur team and dreaming of becoming a professional player one day,” he said.

Running two youth football clubs under his name in Gyeonggi Province, Kim also strives to create a “football culture.”

“Compared with baseball, football failed to reach popular culture. Baseball, which had just a small fan base until the 1990s, has made enormous efforts and now people go to the baseball stadiums on dates or holidays. Football has walked the opposite way,” he said. Wishing for a small change, Kim organized a promotional event called Chicken Day, inviting his football club members and their parents to a restaurant and to cheer for the national team together at the final Asian World Cup qualifiers last month.

“I wish to make football culture more popular, where all family members can spend time and have fun together,” he added.

Kim says young footballers’ individual skills have improved over the years, but the 2002 World Cup craze didn’t incorporate good policies and culture.

“As seen in the recent Choi Soon-sil gate, the sports policies of the nation were played under the hand of President Park Geun-hye’s small inner circle, rather than working-level professionals. Football has lagged in the past six or seven years due to bad policies,” he said.

One such example he says is the promotion and relegation system, where each season the bottom-ranked club in the top-flight K League Classic gets bumped down to the K League Challenge the next season, while the second-to-last team must survive the playoffs. “It was introduced to inject a bit of intensity in the league in 2013, but it only aggravated the situation. The relegated team gets a budget cut and leaves the spotlight. But, once the relegated team returns to the top-flight K League Classic, it has a hard time restoring the slashed budget back to its proper level,” said Kim.

Unlike Premier League players who freely transfer between clubs through negotiations in the European market, Korea has a limited market and has a system that is doomed to stagnation without policies to boost the sport, Kim says.

“Already the popularity of footballers in Vietnam is double the popularity of footballers in Korea. Chinese players get paid ten times more than Korean footballers. It’s no distant future where the East Asian football market gets bigger than ours,” he said. “To change the local football culture, I want to reach a position in the future where I can make sports policies.”