[2018 FIFA World Cup Qualification] Korea vs Qatar 2017/06/13 [R]

Ok. But what does that have to do with anything? Does the KFA really redistribute those funds or is it someone's pocket change?

 

Not an expert, but I believe AFC regulations require promotion/relegation .

 

50% cut to KFA's budget would mean we won't be able to hire world class managers anymore right? No more HMB and Stielike caliber managers would mean the death of Korean football. No more friendlies with B team Ecuador and Nigeria?

 

Unlike European or even Japanese clubs, most K League clubs cannot afford working youth programs. There is a fundamental difference between European and Korean football environment.

Except the likes of Lee SW and Paik SH who can take chances and not go to university, going to college is a better and certainly safer option for most. It does not matter how much you harangue and lecture them from a moral high horse. They are not stupid and they and their parents do what is best for them. It is not like they owe servitude to some kind of soccer God or something. They don't have to do things that are best for soccer. They do what is best for them.

Korean youth programs have a lot of room for improvement but you cannot exactly emulate European systems and they are not really the best model for Koreans. As Hiddink pointed out the disparity in popularity is huge and just on the economic scale Korea can never match, in terms of resources available to football development, countries like Spain which actually has a far smaller economy as a whole.

 

That is because you don't understand it in the first place as the funny expression "use of logics" indicates.

 

LOL. I was curious about that. KFA had a budget of around 100 million in 2011. They apologized for wasting money in 2016. They are known to be very generous to their favorite employees. However Jung's family do not milk money out of KFA though. They have never been accused of that.

 

I agree. The Korean societal/cultural/academic expectations are not supportive of raising professional footballers. Based on phenotypes, Koreans do tend to be physically small ( not necessarily just height ) and this does negatively affect them for air balls or set pieces but this is a different issue altogether and I won't get into it.

A few star players and an excellent coach can only get you so far ( think '02. And then it all goes downhill from there instead of getting better ) but fundamentals are key and Korea has almost none of it.

Look at the past posts from a few years ago and you would notice that we're complaining about the same problems over and over again except maybe different people and games.

 

That's all the more reason to get rid of Stielike as soon as possible. Even two competitive games would be better than none for the new manager.

 

That sounds like a lot of forethought and research into Son's situation...has Son made some kind of comment on Qatari football before? Seems far-fetched to me..

 

The round isn't over yet. Korea still is no. 2 in the group. As it stands, Korea still deserves the spot until it loses/ties the next games and falls to no. 3 or below.

I understand your logic in that maybe this team doesn't "deserve" to qualify.

Should the team not qualify,the Korean national interest in football will significantly decrease. And some players might think we are no longer world cup caliber and this can mentally affect them for the 2022 qualifying games. I don't know how other countries do it or if they even have the same concept but 'jong-shin-ryuk' can sometimes be a real PITA for Koreans.

 

I mean you just have a completely wrong idea of how things work in reality. Like I said, the vast majority of these kids typically don't study at all in school, all the way through college. Their college degrees naturally don't take them very far at all. Apparently, kids were skipping class more often when the schools were controlling everything and the club teams hadn't been involved as much. I'm all for these kids getting a good education as insurance, but that just isn't the reality in Korea. You appear to have some idealistic, American image of the Korean scholar-athlete, and it's just ... a bit naive.

And the biggest problem isn't the money - it's the system. The talent is already there and they're already getting trained, paying hefty amounts of 회비 every year out of their own pockets to do so. These kids don't need state of the art facilities or top tier coaches. The problem, like I said, is that the younger players don't get much playing time because they get corralled into "varsity" teams with much older kids when they're not ready for it. Footballers need to play consistently to develop properly. It really doesn't take a fortune to organize a few extra games a week for the underclassmen to stay sharp.

 

True but you don't know if this will be the result if we don't qualify.

 

Another problen is coaching imo. This might explain why they can't develop decent defenders etc.

 

You right. This is how I see things panning out:

1. Congressional hearing
2. Candle dicks
3. A few telly shows on how much of a fck up this is
4. Silence
5. Business as usual.

 

the real problem is when a korean player becomes a pro, not so much in the youth system where some hidden gems can be easily found.

Put Son with a random korean ajhussi coach since he's 18 and you see what kind of player will be now. Until is20 won't even get much playing time. And he's not going to be anywhere near to the level he has now.

 

Funny people still want to claim there are no talents coming from youth systems, completely negleting to mention the fact that their pro career starts, if they are lucky, at 20 years old.

 

I'm not the first to say this: Korean football has done a sub-par job of converting promising youths into thriving professionals. I think youth-level coaching is fine (at least not the main problem).

 

yeah, youth level coaching is very good actually for a country like S. Korea.

 

Tbh a lot of players aren't that good when they start playing pro. But they also need room and time to develop into the pro game...

 

good points. but how has the prior WC qualifications helped the current situation? I guess I am hoping for big shake up way up at the top.

 

If you look at a country like Iran - nearly twice in terms of young population, reasonably OK living standards, high popularity of soccer as a sport - Korea is not doing that badly as far as producing young talents.

It used to be that, before there were professional sports in Korea, a kid from a poor family goes to a university on scholarship and after graduation plays for a semi professional league club. His day job is with the company affiliated with the club and he continues to work there after his sports career is over. Most of these kids were not good students but they were minimally competent at least. Many of them became fully functional bankers because many of those sem-pro clubs were subsidized by and affiliated with banks, for instance.

Now maybe it is a little different. But realistically unless the kid is very obviously highly talented at young age, he will want to go to university because of the value the Korean society puts on having a college degree. Any future youth development programs will have to work with this reality instead of blindly following European systems.

 

The quality of kids being generated is pretty good for our country. I do think currently that we have a growing pain problem right now where we are valuing certain aspects too much.

Yes everyone would like a CF who can pass, facilitate the attack and work areas outside the box as well. Everyone would like a CB who can distribute the ball out the back.

And I think we've developed those skillsets but also forgotten that you need guys who can score and defend respectively. Its just shocking to see so many players who are so good at secondary and tertiary skills and yet incapable with their job.

Its weird where most other countries fail to round out their players, such as forwards who score and nothing else rising faster than others because they bring wins and goals even if those aren't primary targets of a good youth program.

 

I don't think people are claiming that there isn't talent from our youth system. But I am claiming that there is less talent, as compared to say, 10 years ago.

 

Define "youth level coaching" and "very good" because I don't think you know what you're talking about. The fact of the matter is, I can probably count all the U-21s in the K-League that actually get any play time, with 10 fingers or less. In my definition, that is not "very good".