``Festival Yard for Global Village``, a Stadium of Dream, Opens

Stadium Centenario of Uruguay, Maracana Stadium of Brazil, Munch Stadium of Germany, Aztec Stadium of Mexico, and Stade de France…..

These are the names of main stadiums that have attracted great attention from the world for 16 world cups from the 1940 Uruguay World Cup. A main stadium is recorded in history as a symbol of the World Cup.

At last, the main stadium of the 2002 World Cup, Sangam Stadium opens on 10th. The Sangam Stadium, in which the opening game of defending champion France will be held, presents its magnificent appearance in the evaluation game between Korea and Croatia.

As an exclusive soccer stadium, the Sangam Stadium is the greatest one in Asia with 64,677 seats. It has the most advanced technological facilities such as two electric scoreboards of 25m by 9.2m, 328 speakers, lighting facilities with luminous intensity of 2,000 lux.

The game for celebrating its opening also attracts the attention around the world, because one of the 2002 World Cup hosts Korea and the 1998 World Cup`s third place Croatia faces each other.

Both Korea and Croatia are ready for earning the victory in this attention-grabbing game with the excellent play.

Although it revealed the lack of variety of offensive route, and instability in defense in the evaluation game with Senegal, the Korean team attempts at the first win in the main stadium by employing overseas players such as Seol Ki-Hyun (Anderlecht, Belgium), An Jung-Hwan (Peruzia, Italy) and Shim Jae-Won (Frankfurt, Germany), and veteran players such as Kim Do-Hoon (Chonbuk Hyundai Motors).

The Korean national team constructs the offensive line with Kim Do-Hoon, Seol Ki-Hyun and An Jung-Hwan, and employs Kim Nam-Il (Chunnam Dragons), Lee Young-Pyo, Choi Tae-Wook (Anyang LG), Lee Eul-Yong (Bucheon SK) in the midfield. And Kim Tae-Young (Chunnam), Song Jong-Gook (Busan Icons), and Shim Jae-Won start as defenders, and GK Lee Woon-Jae keeps the goal gate.

The Croatia team is likely to make a merciless attack on the Korean team with `new generation striker` Bosko Balaban (Aston Villa, England), who led the no-defeat march of the team recording 5 goals in the Europe qualifying round, and Goran Vlaovic (Panathinaikos, Greece) at the front.

The 1998 World Cup best scorer, Davor Suker (West Ham United, England) is not able to participate in this game because of the farewell game of Maradona. But the distinguished players such as Boris Zivkovic (Bayer Leverkusen, Germany), Daniel Saric (Panathinaikos, Greece), Jasmin Agic (Dinamo, Croatia) will start this game for Croatia team, so that it is expected to show the world-rank play.

stt77@donga.com