Solid defense of team Korea under coach Hong to counter Peru’s veteran strikers

The Korean soccer team under leadership of coach Hong Myung-bo will reassemble in Suwon on Monday. The team will play a friendly match versus Peru at Suwon World Cup Stadium at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

Peru has failed to advance to the World Cup soccer finals for seven consecutive events since the 1982 World Cup in Spain. It currently ranks seventh of the nine teams in the Latin American qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Peru is striving to advance to the finals in the Latin American continent that includes a number of soccer powerhouses, including Argentina standing at 4th place in the FIFA rankings, Uruguay at 12th, Ecuador at 17th, and Chile at 21st. But the team seemingly stands a slim chance to secure a berth for the finals in the continent with 4.5 berths at stake.

Nevertheless, Peru is a strong team that stands at 22nd in the FIFA rankings. It is as many as 34 levels ahead of Korea, which ranks 56th. The team has failed to display impressive performance at the World Cup, but it even ranked third at the 2011 Copa America Championships, which brought together Latin America’s strong teams. Notably, the Peruvian national team includes in its roster star players who are widely known in the international soccer community.

The most notable in the team is veteran player Claudio Pizarro, 35. Pizarro is a striker with the Bayern Munich, the most prestigious team in the German Bundesliga. He played in 353 games in the Bundesliga and had 166 goals in total. He is standing at ninth overall in the goal rankings in the German league, and is atop in goal standings all time among the foreign players in the league. Standing 184 centimeters tall, he can score goals from all different angles and has strong capacity to score with headers.

Peru’s Flagship players, including Jefferson Farfan, a wing striker (FC Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 04), who is also playing in the Bundesliga, and José Paolo Guerrero (Corinthians Paulista), who is playing in the Brazilian league, are also visiting Korea this time.

Team Korea’s defense capacity will likely be tested once again in a showdown against such highly experienced strikers. Coach Hong has only removed Kim Young-kwon (Guangzhou) from among the defenders in his team, who participated in the East Asian Cup, and not replaced the other defenders ahead of the upcoming match. The key defense line led by Hong Jong-ho (Jeju), Kim Jin-soo (Niigata), and Kim Chang-soo (Kashiwa) remains intact. Lack of scoring capacity was widely revealed as weakness of the Korean team under Hong, while the team’s defense was found to be relatively strong. But the team’s defenders should cope with more competent strikers in the upcoming friendly match.

Attention is also focusing on how Hong will resolve the lack of his team’s attacking capacity, which is considered the biggest problem of the team. Hong will likely deploy Cho Dong-geun (Suwon), or Kim Dong-sub (Seongnam) as one-top striker, and make most of speedy and dynamic movement of second-line strikers including Lee Geun-ho (Sangju), Lim Sang-hyup (Busan) and Cho Chan-ho (Pohang). While boldly deserting the tactic to use Kim Shin-wook (Ulsan)’s height and jumping capacity, which Hong previously used as main plot, the team is expected to display an attacking tactic focusing on systematic passes and speed.