New national team squad

[Holyjoe]

GK: Lee Woon-Jae, Kim Young-Kwang
DF: Yoo Sang-Chul, Choi Jin-Chul, Lee Min-Sung, Park Jae-Hong, Jo Byung-Guk
MF: Lee Young-Pyo, Song Jong-Guk, Park Ji-Sung, Kim Dong-Jin, Kim Doo-Hyun, Kim Jung-Woo
FW: Lee Chun-Soo, Choi Sung-Guk, Cho Jae-Jin, Cha Doo-Ri, Seol Ki-Hyun, Lee Dong-Guk, Ahn Jung-Hwan

I think this is for the friendly against Thailand that's up soon, plus possibly the World Cup qualifier against Vietnam on September 8th.

Lee Woon-jae had better start looking over his shoulder because Kim Young-kwang might be in with a decent shout of grabbing the number 1 shirt by the 2006 World Cup...

[Ed.]

Has anyone told Bonfrere that one of his defenders has announced that he's jacked in international football?

[SteveW]

Korea are a bit of a quandry these days....for the past two years they have had a solid defence and powder puff strike force.

Suddenly at the Asian Championships they start firing in goals but the defence collapses!!

There does seem to be a tendency to pick the World Cup glamour boys regardless of form (I wonder if he even sees the guys in Europe?) and while they keep picking Mr Haircare Products 2002 Ahn Jung Hwan they are going nowhere.

Good to see Lee Chun Soo in there too.....

[nyujeelandsaram]

Don't worry too much. I happened to see a factory recently in the mountains where they are making strikers from recycled cardboard and left over stickers from kids english study books.

They should be knocking in at least 1 or 2 goals in the next WC pool games.

One thing that perhaps went a bit unnoticed from the last WC given all the madness and mayhem was that in their 7 games at the tournament Korea only scored 7 goals so they weren't exactly setting the comp on fire in that respect. Discounting the Turkey game it was 5 from 6. The D though was up to the mark.

2 v Poland
1 v USA
1 v nine man Portugal
1 (+1 in extra time v Italy)
0 v Spain (discounting the 5 penalties of course)
0 v Germany
2 v Turkey in a festival match for crap defence

It's really hard to see how they will EVER get a goal scoring set of lads in the right half of the pitch. Must be some little whipper snapper about to burst onto the scene, only be hyped too much in the balls that passes for sports media in this country (exceptions of course )and then score 3 goals from 26 games in her second year in the league.

[SteveW]

Cha Du Ri looks like he will do a good job for them. He's a proper 'European Style' striker who is not afraid to put himself about a bit.

Looking through the K-League though there isn't any obvious choices for a striker looking to break into the squad.

Doesn't help that all the strikers are Brazilians of course.

I was actually saying to Holyjoe at the last Suwon match that Suwon need to invest in a Korean striker to get over the reliance on Nadson and Marcel..... but then I couldn't think of one.

[nyujeelandsaram]

Are you guys going to the Suwon v Daejeon game tomorrow night?

I'm hoping to get there.

me number is 011-9680-9377

I've got HJ's number. After last time when HJ got lost in Bucheon and blamed it on a local bus we might have more luck meeting.

I suppose you guys sit in with the yobbos though and as I despise S*won I'll be up in the nose bleed seats getting drunk with the missus cheering for a 6-6 draw and a great game from the ref.

[SteveW]

We don't get much choice now that HJ is a celebrity fan....usually one of his groupies drag him into the yobbo section!!

Then lots of 11 year old kids say HELLO HOW ARE YOU? and wait for HJ to give them beer

[Holyjoe]

SteveW said:

Then lots of 11 year old kids say HELLO HOW ARE YOU? and wait for HJ to give them beer

I spend half the time trying to keep Zoran Urumov's mitts off my beer stash

Anyway back to the topic in hand... when is Jasenko Sabitovic's Korean citizenship going to be confirmed? And will he feature in the team? Supposedly Coehlo had sounded out the KFA about playing him once everything went through and got a positive response...
If Manic Radivoje gets his citizenship, and then potentially Urumov too we could see quite a wee shake-up of the national side.

Then again, maybe not.

[nyujeelandsaram]

At Anyang they just used to loiter around our empty beer cans which we had dumped a couple of yards away hoping they were half full.

Don't know why they don't just go and buy em' at the corner store like every other 11 year old.

"they're for me dad, and 5 packs of ciggies too please.... oh and that bottle of whiskey up on that shelf as well thanks".

[redneck13]

I think just one naturalized Korean will be enough... I say go with Sabitovic.

[Colombian]

Jasenko can't play for Korea... he played some Olympic qualifiers for his home country back when he was a u-23.

[Holyjoe]

Colombian said:

Jasenko can't play for Korea... he played some Olympic qualifiers for his home country back when he was a u-23.

Shouldn't be a problem under the recently changed FIFA eligibility rules...

The European Olympic qualifiers are basically the U-21 tournament, and the FIFA rules now allow players to switch nationality even if they have represented one country up to U-21 level.

It's the same rule that Lorenzo Amoruso was going to make use of to be able to play for Scotland (he would have applied for a UK passport and qualified for Scotland on residency) but everyone persuaded him not to as we have enough carthorses in our backline.

[redneck13]

But if it was U23....

[SteveW]

redneck13 said:

But if it was U23....

Yeah but it isn't....European qualification games are an u-21 tournament not u-23 (even though thats Olympic rules). Olympic football is basically ignored in Europe so instead of having a separate qualifying tournament they just combine it with the u-21 European Championship qualifiers....I think. HJ will no doubt correct me in a minute.

[toohyper]

sure let Sabitovic transform into a korean, after all, nobody in Croatia knows who he is.