Park’s Victory Goal Defeated Japan

Korea has revived from three consecutive defeats.

On April 6th in the Densaw Cup 2003 Korea-Japan College Friendship match (joint sponsored by Dong-a Daily Newspaper and Asahi Newspaper) was held in the Tokyo National Stadium, Japan. The Korean players have won the match by 1-0 with victory goal scored by Park young-geun (Korea Univ.).

This is first time four years since 1999, to defeat Japan in this match. However according to records Japan still leads by 4 victories and 3 defeats.

The Korea and Japan began the match with fierce spirit. The Korean team has positioned Kim Wan-soo (Joong-ang Univ.) and Joo Hyung-chul (Kunkuk Univ.) as two top, Park Young-Geun (Korea Univ.) as a playmaker and went against Japan in 3-5-2 formation.

The first and also the victory goal was scored after 34 minutes in to the first half of the match. The ball lightly kicked in by Kim Wan-soo (Joong-ang Univ.) from the left penalty area was smoothly kicked in to the goal post by Park, who managed to penetrate the center. Then charged up Korean team attacked vigorously against Japan in the second half but they’ve failed to score additional goals.

The Japanese team which employed 4-4-2 formation was outnumbered in the mid-field. Japan tried several sneak attacks but failed to penetrate the Korean defense.

Kim Wan-soo was elected as the MVP of the match.

Today, both team`s players have played fairly. Even after fierce body struggles between players, both team members showed sportsmanship by helping each other up from the ground

Hun-Joo Cho Jong-Koo Yang hanscho@donga.com yjongk@donga.com