Huh Jung-moo Appointed New National Team Coach

The Korea Football Association designated Huh Jung-moo, the manager of Chunnam Dragons, to be in charge of the Korean national soccer team on December 7. He will be in command starting from the third preliminary match for the 2010 World Cup, which will be held next February.

Huh took control of the team from October 1998 to November 2000. Guus Hiddink, Humberto Coelho, Johannes Bonfrere, Dick Advocaat, and Pim Verbeek followed him, and after seven years, the team is now set to be coached by a Korean.

The most internationally experienced Korean coach-

The Technical Committee of the KFA appointed Huh thinking that the team may not be ready for the match if they spent too much time on coach designation. Before Huh’s appointment, Mick McCarthy, the manager of Wolverhampton, and Gerard Houllier, former French national football manager, refused to head the team. Lee Young-moo, the head of the Technical Committee, said, “In the beginning, we agreed to go with one of the two Korean candidates if we couldn’t make a contract with the two non-Koreans we wanted.”

The leader of a national team has to be aware of international trends. Huh’s international experience is second-to-none among Korean directors. He played for the national team at the 1986 Mexico World Cup, and served coach for the World Cup squads in 1990 and 1994. For three years from 1998, he was the manager for the national team, and the head coach for four months under Bonfrere. Leading the Chunnam Drangons to the top twice in the FA Cup also won him additional points.

Technical Director Cho Young-jeung said, “We had so many talented candidates, but Huh seemed to be the perfect one because he has been through lots of international matches.”

Comeback match will be on February 6-

Analysts are betting that Huh would not be too worried about winning since the team will play against relatively weaker teams such as Turkmenistan and Jordan.

Huh will have his comeback match against Turkmenistan on February 6 next year in Korea. He will coordinate with the Technical Committee for the summoning schedule and tryout games.

The team will fight against North Korea and Japan in the East Asian Football Federation in Chongqing, China, in mid-February. Huh needs to focus on the World Cup preliminary with North Korea on March 26, since it will receive much spotlight.

One of the most talented players and coaches-

Huh used to be a star player during the 1970s and the 1980s. His nickname is Jindo Dog, which explains his killer instinct, and he is from Jindo, South Jeolla Province. From 1974 to 1986, he played in 87 A-matches and scored 30 goals. After retiring in 1986, he worked as a trainer in 1990, and coach in 1994, both in World Cup games. He was in charge of both the World Cup team and the Olympic team in 1998. However, he resigned after the failure to move on to the round of eight in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and after the defeat in the semi-finals of the 2000 Asian Cup. For three years from 1996, and two years from 2005, he was the commander of the Chunnam Dragons, but did not show good results. In 2006 and 2007, however, he won the FA Cup championship twice, proving his talent.

yjongk@donga.com