Seol Ki-Hyun, Remarkable Development

``It was a fabulous performance which is hard to see even in the big leagues in Europe.``

World-renowned soccer columnist Rob Hughes expressed the great admiration to the performance of `Rivaldo of Korea` Seol Ki-Hyun (22, Anderlecht, Belgium), as he watched the evaluation game between Korea and Croatia on 10th, celebrating the grand opening of the Seoul Sangam World Cup Stadium. He evaluated that Seol had the basic qualities as a striker and moreover had a good grasp of how to play his role during the entire game.

It was right. Despite Seol has not be able to grab many chances to play since he moved from the second division to the first division of Belgian leagues, he showed something certainly different in this game.

Let us see how his play has been changed in the game on 10th.

As two opponent defenders followed him closely in the 45th minute of the first half, Seol Ki-Hyun turned his direction to rear side trapping the ball with his right foot, and then fired a threatening turning shot with his left foot. Even though the ball went wide of the left goal post, he received the praise that it was a very difficult shooting which was hard for even European players to show. It is because that even in the big league, there are little player who can use both right and left foots at will.

This is not all. As Seol Ki-Hyun made the opponent players concentrate on himself, he opened a road for his team`s smooth offense. Even though his ball-handling was a little bit unstable due to the strong pressure of the defenders, two or three Croatia defenders always had to stick around Seol Ki-Hyun. After all, this resulted in enlivening the offensive line of the Korean team.

Experts analyzed that the first goal of Choi Tae-Wook could also be made in the 18th minute of the second half, because Seol Ki-Hyun distracted the attention of Croatia defenders.

When Lee Cheon-Soo centered the ball, Seol Ki-Hyun was pulling up two defenders outside the left side of penalty area. The central zone of the goal area became empty so that An Jung-Hwan was able to pass the ball easily inside the area, and Choi Tae-Wook connected An`s pass to a leading goal.

Head Coach Guus Hiddink had said in Europe that ``I`m so worried because he has stayed in the bench, not on the ground. It would be better to train him in Korea.`` But his worry was just a baseless anxiety. Thus far, Seol has challenged against the high wall of European soccer with his indefatigable physical strength and excellent speed.

Of course, Seol`s unstable ball-handling sometimes break off the offensive tempo, the prolonged bench-warming lowered his sense of game management. However, he proved in this game how he has been changed in the big league so far.

yjongk@donga.com