Team Korea Has Brazilian Goalie Coach

“One more… Oh no, aren’t you going to try hard?”

On September 5, the goalkeepers of the national football team, Lee Woon-jae (Suwon) and Kim Young-gwang (Chunnam) were coached with the words of a foreign coach with blue eyes at the National Football Center (NFC). The foreign coach was so fluent in Korean that he was hardly distinguished from the other Koreans.

The coach is “Cosa” (42, Marco Antonio Alvarez Ferreira), from Brazil.

“Hey, do it faster. Yes, one more. No, no, once again. This is the last time, I swear.” When Cosa starts pulling legs using Korean, Lee and Kim try much harder, with teeth clenched.

Cosa is regarded as “half Korean” among the members of the national football team. He came to Korea as a goalkeeper coach for the Suwon Samsung team in 2001. He joined the Korean national football team in July after his duty with the Chunnam Dragons team.

It is evaluated that Cosa has developed appropriate training methods by analyzing the pros and cons of Korean goalkeepers for six years in Korea. He is called “the devil” because he forces players to train until they pass out of exhaustion. However, it is also known that Cosa plays a “comedian” at other times, such as imitating the lines from comedy programs and changing the atmosphere of the team with his humorous words and acting.

yjongk@donga.com