South Korean soccer will take off to regain the top spot in Asia for the first time in 64 years since 1960.
The national soccer team, led by head coach Jurgen Klinsmann (Germany), will compete in the 2023 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Qatar Asian Cup, which will kick off on the 13th (Korea time).
Winning the Asian Cup has been a long-cherished dream of Korean soccer. Since winning the first Asian Cup in 1956 and the second Asian Cup in 1960, the team has not won a trophy.
The national team, which is trying to regain the top of the Asian Cup for the first time in 64 years with a sluggish resolution, will be joined by key players who are active in major European clubs such as Lee Kang-in (Paris Saint-Germain), Kim Min-jae (Bayern Munich), and Hwang Hee-chan (Wolverhampton), starting with “Captain” Son Heung-min (Tottenham).
For Coach Klinsmann, who took the helm in March last year, the competition also means an “interim evaluation.”
A total of 24 countries will participate in this year’s event, which will be divided into six groups of four countries. Korea belongs to Group E along with Malaysia, Jordan and Bahrain.
The first and second places in each group will go directly to the round of 16, and four teams with good performance among the third places in each group will join the tournament. Korea (23rd in the FIFA rankings) will face Bahrain (86th), Jordan (87th) and Malaysia (87th) in order.
The most interesting thing is the powerful strikers.
There are Son Heung-min (Tottenham), the star and captain of Korean soccer, Hwang Hee-chan (Wolverhampton), who scored in double digits for the first time since entering the English Premier League (EPL), and Lee Kang-in (Paris Saint-Germain), who is evaluated as the future.
This is Son’s fourth Asian Cup. Starting with Qatar in 2011 (ranked third), he participated in the 2015 Australia (ranked second) and the 2019 United Arab Emirates (ranked in the quarterfinals).
Expectations are high as he has displayed his best scoring performance lately. He has scored 12 goals (five assists) in this season’s league, tying for third in overall scoring. He has scored double-digit goals for eight consecutive seasons in the EPL.
He finished warming up for the Asian Cup by scoring three goals and making three assists in the past month. AFC named Son Heung-min as the player to pay attention to in this year’s event.
Hwang Hee-chan, who is making a mark in the EPL with Son Heung-min, is also a notable player.
Hwang Hee-chan is scoring double figures for the first time in the league since he moved to the EPL in the 2021-2022 season. He has scored 10 goals (three assists) in this season, including three goals and one assist in the past month, ranking sixth in the scoring category. 헤라카지노
On top of that, Lee Kang-in, who is considered the future of Korean soccer, is showing off his better skills when he moved to the French Ligue 1 Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), a big club, last summer.
Lee Kang-in, who is being appointed in the Cleansman team, showed off his presence by scoring four goals, including his debut goal in the A-match warm-up match between October and November last year and the second Asian qualifying match for the 2026 North-China World Cup.