Football coaches set eyes on regional title
Host South Korea will be out to win both the men’s and women’s titles at an upcoming regional football tournament, the teams’ head coaches said Tuesday.
Paulo Bento, the men’s bench boss, and Colin Bell, the new head coach of the women’s team, discussed their goals for the 2019 East Asian Football Federation (EAFF) E-1 Football Championship at the tournament kickoff press conference.
The eighth edition of the regional competition will run from Dec. 10-18 in Busan, 450 kilometers southeast of Seoul. South Korea has hosted two previous tournaments.
The South Korean men, ranked 39th in the world, are going for their third straight title and their fifth overall. They will be up against Japan (No. 28), China (No. 69) and Hong Kong (No. 145).
“The men’s team has left a mark in this tournament, and I understand the importance of this tournament,” Bento said. “We’ve won four championships, including the last two. This means our fans will have high expectations this time around. The one thing I can promise our fans is we’ll do the absolute best we can.”
The women’s team, ranked 20th, won the inaugural title in 2005. Three-time defending champions North Korea have withdrawn, leaving South Korea to compete against Japan (No. 10), China (No. 16) and Chinese Taipei (No. 40).
The tournament will be the South Korean coaching debut for Bell, an Englishman who was hired earlier this month.
“The main objective is to win matches. It’s important to instill this mentality in players,” Bell said. “We’ll use these games to instill this style of play we’re looking to adapt to and create and build. That’d be a very large objective.”
Two stadiums in the city, Busan Gudeok Stadium and Busan Asiad Main Stadium, will host the matches.
The women’s team will open play against China at 4:15 p.m. on Dec. 10 at Gudeok Stadium, and the men’s opener will be against Hong Kong at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 11 at Asiad Main Stadium.
The South Korean women will next play Chinese Taipei at 4:15 p.m. on Dec. 15 at Asiad, and the men will face China at 7:30 p.m. on the same day at the same venue.
The women’s finale will be against Japan at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 17 at Gudeok. The men’s final match will also be against Japan, at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 18 at Asiad.
The South Korean men boast superior all-time records against all three opponents: 41-23-14 (winsdraws-losses) against Japan, 19-13-2 against China and 20-5-2 against Hong Kong.
The South Korean women have gone 4-10-16 against Japan, 4-5-27 against China and 12-2-4 against Chinese Taipei.
North to skip women football game in South Korea
North Korea won’t send its women’s soccer team to a regional competition in South Korea in December amid strained ties between the two countries.
The East Asian Football Federation said Wednesday that North Korea informed it in mid-September that it won’t take part in the 2019 EAFF E-1 championship in the southeastern city of Busan.
“We feel that North Korea is not participating in the event due to a complicated reason (caused by politics). I think it is something the North Korean football officials cannot handle by themselves,” Park Yong Soo, the EAFF general secretary, said.
South Korea’s football association said it also confirmed North
Korea’s decision when association officials visited Pyongyang earlier this month for a men’s World Cup qualifier match between the two Koreas. Korean Football Association officials said North Korea gave no reason for deciding not to send a women’s team.
The development is yet another sign of deteriorating sporting ties between the two Koreas amid lack of progress in a broader global diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear program.
North Korea blocked fans and international media from attending the World Cup qualifier at an empty stadium in Pyongyang. There was no live broadcast of the match, which ended in a scoreless draw. FIFA president Gianni Infantino said he was “disappointed.”
South Korea’s football association later sought a punishment for
North Korea, sending a letter to the Asian Football Confederation and arguing that North Korea failed to uphold rules requiring host nations to grant visas and entries for traveling supporters and media without discrimination.
Sports exchanges often mirror the status of political ties between the two Koreas, which remain split along the world’s most heavily fortified border for about 70 years.
Last year, athletes from the two Koreas walked together during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea and fielded a joint team in some events as their relations improved ahead of the start of the nuclear diplomacy.
But North Korea boycotted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Summer Olympics, both held in Seoul. (AP)