Poyet cooks up amazing bibimbap in Jeonju

Jeonbuk manager Gus Poyet Yonhap

Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors is back. After a fall from grace last year, the Jeonju club is back at the top of the K-League after winning the title last weekend. The club has now been champion of Asia’s oldest professional league 10 times, not bad given the southwestern club only won its first title in 2009.

A 2-0 win over Suwon FC on Oct. 18 and a defeat for Gimcheon Sangmu, the closest challenger, means Jeonbuk cannot be caught in the standings despite five games remaining on the schedule. The team has been just that dominant and impressive.

It feels like Korean soccer has returned to a familiar pattern. Jeonbuk was the dominant team of the previous decade, a winning machine. In Asia too, the two-time continental champion was a feared force.

That’s why last season felt so strange, as Jeonbuk finished 10th out of 12 teams and came close to relegation. It was almost unthinkable for such a storied team.

In December, the club appointed Gus Poyet as manager. The Uruguayan made a name for himself as an all-around midfielder in Spain with Real Zaragoza and then in England with Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. As a coach, he is equally well-traveled. There have been spells in charge at Brighton and Sunderland in England, as well as in Greece, Spain, China, France and elsewhere.

In Jeonju, Poyet has made the team believe again, has built confidence in a roster that had lost it a few months earlier. Hard work, motivation and organization was just the start.

“During preseason,” Poyet said after the title was secured, “I could feel how heavy the atmosphere was. They’d lost confidence, rhythm and identity. But day by day, we rebuilt. We didn’t just train — we started talking, laughing, competing again.”

That was just one ingredient in Poyet’s bibimbap, the famous mixed rice dish that is often associated with Jeonju. On the pitch, his successful recipe was built on a solid defense.

The back four are all experienced and then some, with an average age of 36. That is an amazing statistic, one that may have dampened preseason expectations, but they barely put a foot wrong. Another impressive stat is that just 27 goals were conceded in 33 games, by some distance the best record in the top tier.

The attack has fared well too. Italian striker Andrea Compagno has been a revelation in his first season in the Land of Morning Calm, and 26-year-old Jeon Jin-woo has been a breakout star, scoring plenty of goals and providing assists. The forward was so impressive that Jeonbuk received bids for him from European clubs in the summer. Those included KRC Genk in Belgium and West Bromwich Albion in the second-tier English Football League Championship, after Son Heung-min recommended Jeon to the team’s coach, Ryan Mason, formerly of Tottenham.

With Jeonbuk focused on getting back its title, the timing was not ideal to move Jeon, but he could be on his way in the winter or next summer.

He may decide to stay, as the feel-good factor is back in Jeonju, along with a coach who has turned the team around in just a few short months. If this upward trajectory continues into next season, Asia better watch out.