Dick Advocaat Will be a Fearful Teacher to the National Soccer Team

“Pull yourself together, you slackers!”

Dick Advocaat (58), the South Korean national soccer team’s new coach, has begun tightening the discipline among players. Advocaat concluded that the players’ loose mentality was the biggest reason for the decline of the Korean national team since its milestone finish in the semi-finals during the 2002 Korea and Japan World Cup.

Advocaat has already ordered the players not to drive their cars when they come to the National Football Center (NFC) in Paju City, Gyeonggi Province on October 7, which the Korea Football Association (KFA) notified to the players on October 5. Lee Won-jae, the media secretary of the national team, noted, “Coach Advocaat strongly stated that if the players drive, they would feel tired and could not properly focus on training, and if players have cars, when they are away from training, they are able to do other things by driving to places outside the NFC.”

In addition, Advocaat declared that he will not inform players of the training schedule in advance because if they are notified of the training schedule early, players will only maintain good physical conditioning around training time. Advocaat decided that players will strive to keep the best conditioning continuously if they are unaware of when training will occur.

Advocaat says that if some players aren’t in good physical condition, it will become obvious in the training. They will participate in training but those players will be excluded from the pool of regular players on the team.

During the 2002 World Cup, then Korean national soccer team’s coach Guus Hiddink didn’t tell players of the training time in advance, either. Hiddink even failed to inform the coaching staff of the training schedule, which caused a small discord, but in the end, he led the Korean team to the semi-finals.

From now on, players will not be allowed to share rooms as they did in the past. Advocaat ordered the coaching staff to name players who will share a room. Advocaat wants to create an environment where players can have an efficient resting area by stopping gossiping among players and allow them to spend more time on researching and training.

In addition, Advocaat will continue to reform the team’s atmosphere by moving the players’ lodgings to the Seoul Grand Hilton Hotel in the midpoint of the training, on October 10.

The Korean national soccer team met a fearful teacher. It will be interesting how much the Korean national soccer team will change.

Jong-Koo Yang yjongk@donga.com