Too Much to Hope For

“There is far to go to join the top level of the world.”

After failing to advance to the semifinals, Korean Olympic Soccer coach Kim Ho-gon evaluated, “I felt the world barrier is still too high for us. Our players don’t have enough experience playing in international games and therefore failed to exercise their talents to the full extent. Strategies for coping with the opposing teams also were not good enough.”

In the 2004 Athens Olympic Men’s Soccer quarterfinal between South Korea and Paraguay held yesterday in the Thessaloniki Kaftanzoglio Stadium, Korea was behind 0-3 after it gave in two goals to Fredy Bareiro and one goal to Jose Cardoso. Korea’s Lee Cheon-soo made one goal by his medium distance shoot at 29 minutes in the second half, and gained another goal five minutes later by a penalty kick. Still, Korea could not reverse the score and lost the game, 2-3.

We accomplished our primary goal of surviving the group match with one win and two ties to advance to the quarterfinals for the first time in 56 years, since the 1948 London Olympics. But nonetheless, we feel bad because we expected we could advance to the finals after competing with Iraq if we won against Paraguay, not one of the well-known strong teams such as Italy or Ghana, in the quarterfinal.

In other matches, Argentina beat Costa Rica, 4-0, and Iraq and Italy bested Australia and Mali, respectively, both 1-0. Now the semifinals will be played between Paraguay and Iraq and between Argentina and Italy.

What is the hurdle the Korean Soccer team must clear in order to accomplish our dream of winning a gold medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics for the first time in history? First of all, experts point out that there should be more Koreans playing in the “big leagues” in European professional soccer. For this, there should be support from the Korean Soccer Association.

Our coaching staffs should also focus on learning advanced training techniques through overseas training for themselves. Guss Hiddink, former coach of the Korean national soccer team, was able to raise Korean soccer to be one of the strongest four in the world, and the main secret of his success was scientific training technique called power training.

Soon-Il Kwon stt77@donga.com