6 players playing for Middle East leagues join Team Korea for Asian Cup

6 players playing for Middle East leagues join Team Korea for Asian Cup. January. 13, 2015 07:11. .

Six players on Team Korea’s roster for the Asian Cup championship are playing in the Middle East leagues. They are Cho Young-cheol, and Han Kook-young (Qatar SC), Lee Myung-joo (Al-Ain), Lee Keun-ho (El-Jaish), Kwak Tae-hwi (Al Hilal), and Nam Tae-hee (Lekhwiya). Players from the Middle East leagues currently account for the largest number ever in a Korean national team that has participated in official international competitions.

There is a good reason for this phenomenon. Two teams in the Middle East namely Oman and Kuwait belong to Group A, which also includes the Korean team. If Korea is to advance to the final, it could encounter three more teams from the Middle East. Middle East soccer is somewhat different from Asian soccer. “Middle East players are agile and boasts good skills, but given their weak teamwork, they could become disorderly and hopeless once they get disorganized. Many players are short-tempered, and they easily give up. Due to their strong determination to win, Middle East players sometimes display ‘bed soccer’ in which players intentionally fall down when their teams are leading the game,” said Lee Jung-soo (Al Sadd), who has been playing in the Qatar league for five years. If Korea is to win a Middle East team, it needs players who are well aware of Middle East soccer.

However, only Cho Young-cheol from the Middle East actually played in the first match against Oman on Saturday. “It was partly affected by individual players’ conditions and injuries, but it was a result of the strategy that deployed the best 11 players in order to defeat Oman," KBS soccer commentator Han Joon-hee said. Coach Uli Stielike had no choice but to mobilize all six players from the European leagues as starters in his bid to secure victory in the first match without fail. Players in the Middle East can hardly afford to overcome players in Europe just yet.

However, in the second match against Kuwait that will take place at Canberra Stadium in Australia at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, more players from Middle East leagues are expected to be deployed. Above all, Cho Young-cheol, who scored the finisher in the match against Oman, Lee Chung-yong (Bolton), and Kim Chang-soo (Kashiwa Reysol) cannot play due to injury, and therefore the Korean team needs substitutes for them. “We cannot win the title just with 11 players. I will widely mobilize the 23 players," coach Stielike said.

As of now, Lee Keun-ho will highly likely play in the upcoming match. Lee is the "killer of Middle East teams" who scored 11 of his 19 A-match goals in games against Middle East teams. Analysts also say there is a chance that Lee Myung-joo and Nam Tae-hee, who play highly aggressive and boast speedy penetration and dribbles, can also play as starters. While trailing Australia in goal records (Australia +3, Korea +1), Team Korea can rise to No. 1 of its group only when it scores a large number of goals in the match against Kuwait.