Saturday Night Life

Hong Myung-bo, head coach of the Korean men’s national football team, runs practice at the National Football Center (NFC) in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday. The team will play Australia in their opening match of the EAFF East Asian Cup at the Seoul World Cup Stadium on Saturday. The match, which will begin on 7 p.m., will be aired on cable channel JTBC. / Yonhap

Much-anticipated Hong Myung-bo era begins with East Asian Cup

By Kim Tong-hyung

Hong Myung-bo has taken over as manager of the Korean senior football team with the promise to create a squad that can excel in next year’s World Cup finals in Brazil. It didn’t take long for him to make his first changes, which had as much to do with fashion and Facebook as football.

Hong’s players arrived at the Paju National Football Center in Gyeonggi Province Thursday looking as if they were preparing for an Armani photo-op instead of the East Asian Cup that begins in Seoul on Saturday.

The coach had instructed his men to wear business attire whenever they are engaged in team business outside of the gym, practice pitch and stadium. The players also had to sit through a lecture aimed at educating them on the "right way’’ to behave on social media, which seemed to be a passive-aggressive way to encourage them not to be seen there at all.

It’s clear that Hong’s job will be equally about picking the right players and schemes as cleaning the stench left by his predecessor Choi Kang-hee, whose legacy as Korea manager will be defined by the shots Ki Sung-yeung took at him on Facebook.

Despite fielding a team that bottomed, cowered and caved under Choi’s watch, Korea stumbled onto a spot in Brazil by the skin of its teeth. The social media debacle surrounding Choi and the Swansea City midfielder provided a resemblance of proof of what had seemed obvious to the eyes ― the players, overdosed with under-coaching, had clearly been tuning Choi out.

Korean senior national football team players Lee Beom-yeong, Lee Yong, Jung Sung-ryong, Kim Shin-wook and Yeom Ki-hoon, from left, arrive at the NFC Wednesday in business attire, as required under a dress code introduced by new manager Hong Myung-bo. / Yonhap

Hong could speechify all day about the importance of putting collective success before individual achievements and behaving and dressing in a professional way. His success as head coach will depend on his ability to inject new ideas and inspire a group of players who had been forced to worship at Choi’s temple of brain-dead long-ball.

Hong’s built-in advantage is that he had worked with some of the best young players in the country, including the Bundesliga trio of Son Heung-min, Koo Ja-cheol and Ji-Dong-won, as the coach of the Korean Olympic team that won bronze in London.

Korea will kick off the East Asian Cup with a match against Australia at the Seoul World Cup Stadium Saturday evening before clashing with China and Japan.

As a player, Hong was widely considered the best defender Asia has ever produced. As coach, he believes shoring up Korea’s grotesque defensive line is the priority on his lengthy to-do-list.

Jeju United standout Hong Jung-ho and Kim Young-gwon seem to be Hong’s preferred choice as central midfielders, although the pairing at fullback seems less obvious. In the practice at the NFC, Hong was experimenting with a 4-2-3-1 formation with a pair of center midfielders protecting the back four and towering striker Kim Shin-wook employed as the target man.

Team captain Ha Dae-sung, an FC Seoul veteran, is likely a starter, but his partner in the central midfield axis is less certain. Veterans Yeom Ki-hoon, Lee Myoung-ju and Lee Seung-gi are notable names in the midfield lineup that seems to have an abundance of versatile players who can digest interchangeable roles, but short on traditional wingers who can burst down the flanks.