Headliners Lee Dong-gook, Bodo/Glimt, Sassuolo & Pitso Mosimane
Striker finally calls time on a fascinating and eventful career
Lee Dong-gook’s career had more ups and downs than the mountain-covered Korean peninsula. The record goalscorer in both the K League and Asian Champions League had plenty of heartbreak along the way, and still found time to become a reality TV star.
Ironically, it was the lowest point that propelled Lee, now 41, to achieve so much. In 1998 – as a teenager – he helped Pohang Steelers win the Asian Club Championship, and followed that with a call-up to the World Cup squad. Two years later, he was top scorer as South Korea finished third at the Asian Cup, with his career going from strength to strength. It was a huge surprise, then, when Guus Hiddink left him out for the 2002 tournament on home soil.
“Many Korea fans thought I should have been in the squad and so did I,” Lee said in 2020. “In hindsight, that was the one big reason why I shouldn’t have been called up. I tried hard but I was so arrogant and I failed to get into the squad. I talked a lot to the Korean media and wandered from place to place. I was shocked by the decision and started to hate football.”
The co-hosts reached the semi-final but Lee did not join the frenzy. “I was in Korea but I did not watch a single World Cup game. Instead, I drank a lot of alcohol in an attempt to numb the pain.”
Not only did his former team-mates earn praise and plaudits, they also secured exemption from military service. Meanwhile, Lee had to join up a few months later. The army, however, was the making of him.
“There, Lee Dong-gook’s second life began,” he said. “I got mentally strong and humble. I think I would not be where I am if I had made the World Cup squad in 2002. Before that, I leaned on my natural talent and ability but then I realised how much hard work it took to make it at a professional level and started to redouble my efforts.”
That made “The Lion King” (a nickname derived from an early mullet-like hairstyle) Korea’s leading man once again. In 2006 he was in the form of his life and all set for the World Cup, but a cruciate ligament injury ruled him out of action just weeks before the tournament in Germany began.
“I was in Korea but I did not watch a single World Cup game. Instead, I drank a lot of alcohol in an attempt to numb the pain”
It was more heartbreak, but at least there was the compensation of a move to the Premier League. Lee finally returned to the pitch as a late substitute for Middlesbrough against Reading in February 2007, and with virtually his first competitive touch in ten months, hit the post.
If that had gone in, perhaps things could have been different. Instead, he failed to score a league goal for Boro, was quickly – and understandably – labelled a “flop” by the English media and returned to South Korea in 2008 for a short stint at Seongnam FC, then the most successful team in K League history.
In 2009, he moved to Jeonbuk Motors who, at the time, had never won a league title. Now they have eight, surpassing Seongnam as the league’s most successful club, and Lee has played a major role. The first title came in his first season, and the last came on the final day of the 2020 campaign as he hung up his boots.
By the time Lee collected his eighth championship medal in November, he had scored 228 goals – more than anyone else in the league’s 38-year history. In 2016 he won the Asian Champions League, and has since become the competition’s most prolifiic player with 37 strikes, in spite of the fact that he didn’t appear in the tournament until his thirties.
He did eventually return to the World Cup in 2010, but failed to make an impact and was overlooked for the 2014 edition. In 2017 he retired with 105 caps and 33 goals to his name.
The nation had already taken Lee back to its heart before he became the star of reality television show, The
Return of Superman in 2015, where he looked after his five children (in a country with the lowest birth-rate in the world, this is worthy of note).
But first and foremost, he was a fine footballer with a memorable career that lasted over 20 years. “I got to hoist the trophy on my last day, and this was just the kind of happy ending that I’d dreamed about.”