Jordon Mutch: “Obviously everything is in Korean”
What’s it like being the first English-born player in South Korea for 14 years? The former Palace man is finding out
In February, you joined Gyeongnam FC in South Korea. How did that happen? I was on a free after agreeing to part with Crystal Palace and looking at my options, then got the opportunity to go to Korea. I see a lot of people move to Asia – the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Japan – and I really fancied it. I spoke to my former Palace team-mate Lee Chung-yong about the league, and the main reason I came here was that the team play in the Asian Champions League. It was an interesting option, so that’s why I took the chance.
Are you living out there alone? Most of the time. My agent, Sam, stays with me every now and then, which has helped me settle. This part of the world is completely different to anywhere else I’ve lived before, so I’m still adjusting at the moment, but I’m getting there.
What’s the hardest thing to adapt to? It’s the simple things – the apartments out here are set up very differently, and obviously everything’s written in Korean. So if you do normal things like washing your clothes, you don’t have the English instructions on the machine to show you what to do. Finding a hairdressers and telling them what you want done is tough, too. You can’t just Google where the nearest hairdressers is, because they don’t use Google over here – they use a search engine called Naver and it’s all in Korean! The small things are proving to be the biggest challenges.
Gyeongnam are based in Changwon, in Korea’s south east. What’s it like? It’s a very traditional Korean city. There aren’t many foreign people here – it’s really just South Koreans, which is nice as you get a real taste of the culture. There aren’t so many things to do – it’s a chilled kind of place. The nearest big city is Busan, the second largest city in the country, which is 40 minutes away. I go there to eat sometimes.
Is the language barrier a problem? In training it’s usually OK – football is universal, as they say. Sometimes we have an interpreter in meetings who speaks English for me, and Portuguese for the two Brazilian lads in our squad. Sometimes you want to find out what everyone is saying, so it can be a little frustrating. Then again, it can be good not to understand sometimes...
When you first arrived, pictures of your unveiling went viral – it looked like you were posing for a bout with a giant bird. What was going on?! I didn’t understand what it was about to begin with! The club have different poses. There’s one for love that you do with your hand - Heung-min Son does it when he celebrates goals. The one at my presentation with the club mascot
was showing a fist to the camera – just to show you have fight for the team!
How have you found playing in the Asian Champions League? We played against Shandong Luneng, who Marouane Fellaini and Graziano Pelle play for, and should have won, but Pelle equalised late on. The standard is high: everyone takes it seriously. It’s like the Champions League in Europe – you go to train at the stadium the evening before, and the security’s very tight. We also travelled to Malaysia and played their top team, Johor Darul Ta’zim. Their facilities were unbelievable, and I think a crown prince runs the club. We also had Kashima Antlers from Japan in our group – they won the title last year and then only lost 3-1 to Real Madrid in the Club World Cup. We were 2-0 up against Kashima with 15 minutes to go, but lost 3-2 in the end.
You spent time on loan at Vancouver Whitecaps last year – how was that? Ex-wolves player Carl Robinson was the manager. He said he liked how I played and wanted to give me an opportunity to play some football. I can’t thank him enough. It was a fantastic club and city. I would have stayed if Carl was still the manager, but circumstances changed and I decided to move on.
You played alongside young Canadian star Alphonso Davies and he’s now at Bayern Munich. How good is he? An unbelievable talent for his age. He’s going to be a top, top player in a year or two – we’re going to be hearing a lot more about him. He’ll be scoring goals in the Champions League pretty soon.
There’s one question that’s always bugged us at FFT… why Jordon rather than Jordan? I actually only found out a month ago when I was speaking to my mum on the phone! At the time I was born, a lot of people had been calling their children Jordan. She wanted it to be different, so just changed the A to an O. Simple!
Why did you leave Crystal Palace before the end of your contract? It was difficult not getting opportunities there, after already proving myself in the Premier League when I played for Cardiff. Not getting the chance to play five or six matches on the bounce was really frustrating. Now, my goal is to be on the pitch on a regular basis, and I’ve been given the platform to do that here. As soon as I arrived, I played 10 or 11 games in a month and a half. It’s been fantastic for me. Will Unwin