The Korea Football Association’s (KFA) National Power Enhancement Committee will meet for the second time on Thursday to select a successor to Jürgen Klinsmann.
The second meeting of the committee will be held this afternoon at the Football Hall in Jongno-gu, Seoul. According to the KFA, the meeting will be held behind closed doors and no briefing will be made public. It will meet several times in the coming days and will release the final results to the media.
The KFA appointed Jeong Hae-sung, chairman of the association’s competition committee, as the new head coach on Tuesday, replacing Michael Muller, as the KFA reorganized the committee to find a new coach after sacking Jürgen Klinsmann. The new members of the committee include Gimpo FC head coach Jung Jae-woon, Sungbae Park, Soongsil University head coach Park Sung-bae, commentator Park Joo-ho, former Gwangju FC head coach Song Myung-won, Sejong Sports Toto head coach Yoon Duk-yeo, Gangwon FC head coach Yoon Jeong-hwan, Mungyeong FC head coach Lee Im-yeon, QMIT CEO Lee Sang-ki, former Vietnam national team coach Lee Young-jin, and KFA technical committee chairman Kim Jeon-jun.
The first meeting of the new power-enhancement committee was held on Nov. 21. The meeting lasted more than three hours from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but there were no clear opinions or messages from the association. At a press briefing after the long meeting, Chairman Jeong Jung-sung said mostly principled words that left many frustrated.
For now, the consensus seems to be in favor of hiring a domestic coach rather than a foreigner as the permanent head coach, rather than an interim one. South Korea will play two matches against Thailand in the second Asian qualifying round for the 2026 North and Central American World Cup next month on Nov. 21 and 26, so the federation is expected to appoint a permanent coach before then. “It was agreed that an interim coach is difficult to choose due to various obstacles in reality,” said Jeong Jung-sung.
When asked if a current K League manager would be a possibility, he replied, “We decided to consider both managers who are taking a break and those who are working.” Current candidates include Ulsan HD head coach Hong Myung-bo, FC Seoul head coach Kim Ki-dong, Olympic team coach Hwang Sun-hong, Jeju United head coach Kim Hak-beom, and former Gangwon FC head coach Choi Yong-soo.
The eight requirements for a new head coach were also revealed by Jung Jung-sung himself. The first is competence, second is player development, third is a good reason, fourth is experience, fifth is communication skills, sixth is leadership, seventh is organizing the best coaching staff, and eighth is performance. “We will select the head coach based on these criteria,” emphasized Jeong Jung-sung.
It is expected that the second meeting on the same day will decide on a specific list of domestic coaches. However, with the start of the K League season just around the corner, it is doubtful that any coach will be able to pick up the ‘poisoned chalice’ left behind by Klinsmann. Of the five Korean coaching candidates, Choi Yong-soo is the only one who is currently ‘unemployed’. Kim Ki-dong of Seoul and Kim Hak-bum of Jeju have only been in their new jobs for a little over a month and are still in the midst of training camps and building their new teams.
Ulsan head coach Hong Myung-bo was asked about his future after the second leg of the 2023-2024 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Champions League (ACL) Round of 16 match between Ulsan and Banfore Goohoo the previous day, and he replied, “I don’t know anything about it, so I can’t comment.” Kim Ki-dong also told the media, “I’m focused on FC Seoul and I think the team comes first. I haven’t thought about them (the national team) at all,” he said.
After Klinsmann’s dismissal, the federation contributed to the search for a new coach by establishing principles and criteria. However, it seems to be in a rush to get a homegrown coach into the job as soon 카지노 as possible, with “eight requirements for a head coach” and other “rhetoric”. Fans have been saying that the second World Cup qualifier against Thailand is not important right now. There are more important things to look forward to: the final World Cup qualifiers and the North and Central American World Cup. To that end, there are growing calls for a broader pool of candidates, not just domestic coaches, but foreign coaches as well.
Fans have also raised their voices against the selection of an active K League manager. Ulsan HD’s official supporters, the Cheryong Warriors, released a statement on their social networking service (SNS) account on the 22nd. “We would like to express our strong regret over the Korean Football Association’s decision to select the K League’s active head coach, which was reported in various media,” the organization said. “The KFA does not feel any responsibility for the recent events in Korean soccer and is trying to avoid responsibility by using the K League manager as a shield,” the statement continued.
“The KFA did not take responsibility for the crisis in Korean soccer during the buildup to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, and instead of offering a responsible solution, the KFA used Choi Kang-hee, the current head coach of the K League, as a shield to superficially address the issue. And now, the association is repeating the mistakes of the past and trying to scar K League fans once again.”
“We strongly condemn the appointment of all active K League coaches, including Hong Myung-bo, and will spare no effort to defend them. The K League is no longer the exclusive property of the association, but the result of the hard work of fans, players, clubs, and managers.”