The Conclusion is Metsu!

Bruno Metsu (50 years old, France), the former Senegal Coach, has been selected as the next Korea Soccer national team coach.

The Korea Football Association called a technical committee at Soccer Hall in Sinmunno, Seoul on May 30, and announced that they took Metsu (coach of Al Eine football club, United Arab Emirates) in place of Umberto Coelho, who was sent off on April 19 due to bad results.

All nine members who attended for the committee listened to the results from the inspection team which returned to Korea after interviewing four candidates, Rouis Felipe Scolari, Portugal coach, Senol Gunes, the former Turkey coach and Michael McCarthy, the former Ireland coach, and picked him through a secret vote.

--Why Metsu?

The four necessary conditions for the selection of the technical committee were team-commanding, international results such as the World Cup, the understanding of world soccer trends and fluency in English. It is said that Metsu had best points in all four fields in the interview with the inspection team.

Scolari, who was considered as a strong candidate with Metsu, was evaluated highly on the leadership and good awareness of world soccer, but it was disadvantageous that he could come to Korea only after July, when Euro 2004 would be over. Gunes was also excluded because he is short of team-commanding experience and he can only speak Turkish and German to make communication difficult.

Metsu expressed a positive view saying, “The possibility and potential of Korea Soccer is excellent, but I don’t think the possibility is being well drawn out currently. The goal should be more than the final four in the next World-Cup.”

--How much will his annual salary be?

The early intention of the KFA was to pay him as much as Guus Hiddink (a million dollar) and Coelho (estimated more than 700 thousand dollars) received. The amount of money now is quite different with the sky-rocketing value of Metsu, however, as the Al Ittihad Club of Qatar recently proposed him 1.7 million dollars.

Consequently, it is said that KFA is putting a million dollar (approximately 1.2 billion won) as a basic and is trying to make a contract of adding an incentive option according to the results of Asian Cup and 2006 Germany World-Cup.

The technical committee will also make a knot in the issue on the appointment of Korean coaching staffs as soon as the contraction with Metsu is finished. Foreign coaches, who were requested by Metsu, are a goalie coach and a physical trainer who have been together with Metsu in Al Eine right now. The rest of coaching positions will be Koreans by his request, so open applications will be held among Korean coaches by June 5, and the technical committee will appoint two of them on June 7.

Sang-Ho Kim hyangsan@donga.com