Fighting the Jinx

“Know your enemy’s weakness but avoid exposing yours.”

Ahead of a quarter-final match with Spain on June 22, the national team had a training session on Thursday morning following the afternoon training on Wednesday. So far, however, players have not practiced penalty shootout, which is deemed vital in a sudden-death match.

Penalties, in fact, have become a glaring weakness of Korean team after a series of penalty misses. Lee Eul-yong missed a penalty in the June 10 match against the U.S. and the golden boy Ahn Jung-hwan followed suit in the second-round match with Italy. Of 18 penalties given in the tournament, only 5 were flopped, of which 2, or 40%, were missed by Korean players.

It looks strange that Korea does not focus on penalty practices before the do-or-die match with a strong opponent. Given it has more to do with psychology than with physical fitness, however, the main concern is how to ease the burden on the players.

Also, the absence of penalty practices sends an implicit message to Spain that Korea is determined to end the match within the regular 90 minutes. Although it is common for a coach to choose penalty kickers before a game, Hiddink is known to make a last-minute decision considering conditions of players on that day.

Some foreign presses doubt that Korean players will be as energetic as before after the bruising match with Italy, but fitness is still seen as strength of the team. Thanks to hard trainings before the tournament, the team is expected to recover fast.

Meanwhile, Spain seems to feel pressure from their ‘final 8 jinx.’ Spain, despite their world’s most highly-rated players and professional league, has failed to advance to the final 4 since the 1950 Brazil World Cup during its 11 World Cup appearances.

In its first appearance in 1934 Italy World Cup, it defeated Brazil 3-1 in the first round only to meet the hosts Italy in the second round with whom they drew in the first match and then lost 0-1 in the rematch on the following day.

Haunted by the early nightmare, it continued to fail to reach the semi-finals – it suffered a penalty exit from Belgium in the 1986 Mexico World Cup and a 1-2 defeat from Italy in the 1994 U.S. World Cup. The team has not been lucky when it comes to matches with hosts, either. It met with hosting teams twice (1934 and 1950) and lost twice.

Sang-Ho Kim hyangsan@donga.com