Olympic Team Delays Trip to Qatar

The Korean Professional Football League reconfirmed its plans to reject the sending of the Korean Olympic team players for the competition among eight countries to be held in Qatar.

Gwak Jung-hwan, president of the Korean Professional Football League, and the heads of 14 professional football teams held a general assembly at the JW Marriott Hotel, located in Banpo-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul on January 16 and reconfirmed the decisions of the board from the previous day. The League repeated, “We cannot send our players to a competition that is against our rules.”

Gwak said, “A lot of issues have come up surrounding the sending of our players. But please view this situation not as a clash or conflict, but a process in advancing Korean football.”

With the announcement, the Korean Football Association’s plan to participate in the competition among eight countries in Qatar, to be held from January 21, may be canceled. The Korean Olympic team was scheduled to leave for Qatar in the afternoon, but delayed its plans.

Kim Ho-gon, executive director of the Korea Football Association, said, “I believe that with the inclusion of Australia, the Olympic preliminaries in the Asian region may be harder to pass than the World Cup preliminaries. If we get in, we may expect good results in the Beijing Olympics, because the time differences are small. According to my experience of heading the Olympic team, the Qatar competition will strengthen the team. I expected better results, but it seems difficult now. We will set new plans.”

bluesky@donga.com