Lee Young-pyo to Transfer to AS Roma

Lee Young-pyo (age 29) will be leaving Tottenham Hotspur in the English Premier League to join the AS Roma of Serie A.

“The two clubs have agreed on Lee Young-pyo’s transfer. We are discussing detailed conditions such as his annual salary with AS Roma,” declared GSEN, Lee’s agency, on Tuesday. “It is an individual transfer and not a trade with Ahmed Mido Hossam, the Egyptian striker who Tottenham has on loan from AS Roma,” GSEN explained. The transfer makes Lee the second Korean football player to join Italy’s Serie A after Ahn Jung-hwan, who played for Perugia from 2000 to just after the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup.

Serie A is one of the three major European big leagues along with the English Premier League and the Spanish Primera Liga, and AS Roma is a traditionally strong club which has won three Italian Championships and seven Italian Cups, or Coppa Italia.

Having moved to Tottenham from the Netherlands’ PSV Eindhoven last season, Lee showed solid performance as a left-back starter in the 2005/2006 season but changed to a right-back this season, handing over the previous position to Benoit Assou-Ekotto from Cameroon. In AS Roma, he will be competing over the starting position with Leandro Cufre, who played for the Argentinean team in the 2006 Germany World Cup.

Lee Young-Pyo was to return to Korea on August 30 in order to play in the September 2 preliminary match for the 2007 Asian Cup, but will not be joining the Korean national team if his transfer to the Italian club is confirmed.

yjongk@donga.com