So @jinseokyang and I were talking about making a report/"petition" to sent to KFA. It'll be about addressing the problems and some of the possible solutions we came up with. This thread will be the first stage of the report aka rough draft. Everyone can pitch in their ideas but right now we'll be mostly discussing the problems and when we got that covered, we'll try to find the possible solution later. We can pretty much go over everything you feel that needs to be addressed about Korean football such as the pro league/youth system/players/organization etc. We'll be doing this mostly though dialogue/discourse. After we got that done, someone will make the final report in google doc and get it translated in Korean. Then we'll someone sign our names or something like that. Also I believe there will be some new visitors in our subforum that will also help out on this discussion. They will be people from twitter, The Tavern, and other websites that focuses on Korean football.
I think the important thing for Korean football, or any other sport, is that it needs to be more accessible. Anyone know if KFA is working hard to facilitate an environment where football is accessible? (building pitches in hilly neighborhoods, etc.).
Ok I'll go first. I think one big issue with Korean football is the transition from youth to pro and pro to European leagues. Personally I don't know how good youth system is in Korea but I know not so long ago they did change things up a bit. I'll say the youth system is for the most part ok, even though I wish there were more big athletic guys. The problem arise when they graduate from the youth academy and go to college/pro. Now I'm not a huge fan of the college system because I find the competition to be too low, and when they graduate most of these guys start their professional career when they're 21/22 which is too old. However, when they do end up as pro, they'll mostly ride on the bench without seeing much minutes until they're 21/22. I heard that in order to create more world class players, having u-20 players play in a competitive league consistently is one of the most important ingredient. In the current set up, this will never be the case. Now for pro to Europe I think the biggest issue is money. Most players don't make enough money because K-league is dirt poor. That's why they'll go to China/Middle East to make easy money/playing time instead of going to Europe and challenging themselves. Also most Korean players have shorter pro career due to what I said above and the military. Not only that for some reason, many European leagues especially Germany tend to prefer young players right off university than young K-leaguers. Don't know why.
At least one under 19 player starts in every challenge team. At least one under 21 player starts in every classic team.
Will force some club to rely on young players...the most talented from youth academies (doesn't have to be club's academy) If a (random name) Kim Dong Sung stands out with (random squad) Goyang in the challenge, then chances are that some k league classic club are willing to sign him. How many under 19 players play in the challenge?
Another problem: Obviously I really like the K-league and it's probably the most followed league for me even considering the time difference. However, it can be horrendous to watch sometimes. I'll say 50% has to do with low attendance/atmosphere, and the other 50% has to do with the quality. I think the quality really needs to increase and some of these scrubs should be tickled down to a lower league or teams. Sadly, we don't have enough clubs and league for that, and clubs don't have money to boost their team up. Personally I think it'll be great if they allowed more foreign based players if that means increasing the quality, and at the same time decreasing the size of the team and sending the scrubs to new professional clubs in second division or third division. It'll be really great if this can happen but at the moment that's impossible.
Yes, but one of the problem with low attendance is due to low quality for average Korean apparently. TBH I went to one live K-league match when I was in Korea. Luckily it was one of the better match between Ulsan and Jeju. Really fun especially when we had national team players like Lee Keun Ho and Kim Shin Wook. Everyone recognized them even my grandma. Sadly for our casual fans, they never felt tied to the team or the supporter group. The supporter group did one thing but the casual fans just sat down and watch and ate chicken. I feel in a lot of ways the support groups in Korea are very exclusive. They didn't want to cheer with the casual fans at all. So in return, the causal fans don't feel connected with the team and treat going to K-league matches as if they're going to a picnic with their children/family.
I think spectating/enjoying sports is just not a part of contemporary Korean culture... There is only so much that KFA can do. I hope something fundamentally changes.
This thing (people eating chicken) i notice a lot when i watch k leagues matches on youtube lol. I don't know what korean's standard of good quality is but for sure, i think most koreans don't care about k league matches regardless of the quality.
Aight so I know I'm going to be adding a lot more to this as time goes on (and for those ppl who are not into BSK I am contacting on twitter/FB right now), but for now: More players need to play period. Right now we have a tiny number of teams each with a giant ass squad (40+). Not healthy. There are ways about going about this: Make more teams in the K League Classic by bringing the Challenge teams up and bringing the tier 3/4 teams into the challenge. OR, make a designated U21/U23 league like most european teams do (basically, a mandatory R League where every team has its own B Team). Maybe a cap on how many players are signed with the first team? But accommodate more players by making more clubs, or making more professional clubs in the Classic/Challenge ^ A U19/U21 sangju team actually solves the military problem pretty well. The "you cannot sign a player until they're 18" law needs to be done with - why can't the most dedicated footballers play pro at 16 or 17 if they're good enough? Public opinion: Pretty much everyone in Korea thinks K League = shit. Like ppl do in the USA, except worse. TBH I have no clue about how to make this happen lol Money. I'm not an econ major but surely we can look into Chinese/Japanese models RE: this project, this is what we can come up with as fans, now if only I could get some input from players and coaches... that's what I'm going to try to work on right now.
Why not both? Also for u18 law, maybe they can introduce a rule where minors can sign a "part-time" contract where they can play x amount of minutes for their clubs.
But that assumes that there's loads of good young players who just aren't being played. All a quota would do is raise prices for the youth players. Until the high school issue is resolved, youth players won't be good enough. No point in forcing clubs to play bad youth players in place of bad older players.
This is stupid. I like both of you as posters, I do, but this is stupid. We top out a group with Germany and Mexico in it, and we played better than Honduras but lost in the quarterfinals. We were Asian cup finalists. We might not be dominating but we are hardly in trouble. Come on guys. It's not like we barely beat Fiji or finished the group with 1 point, and we havent really struggled in Asian world cup qualifiers.
I completely disagree. Average salary in K-League Classic is about $140-150k. And bear in mind most of the clubs are in debt. When you put the profitability of the league, the wage is very very competitive. Also, if that's the case, why aren't Japanese players flocking to desert leagues or CSL? Their average salary is about $160-170k, and desert leagues and CSL can offer far more. As for the military issue, I don't think that holds that much argument given that most of the footballers with exemptions have gone to desert leagues or CSL, though it is a factor. I agree. This has been the crucial difference between the popularity and marketability of KBO and K-league. KBO have made inroads into casual fans, where going to a baseball match is a common pass-time. However, K-League have an image of, like you said, a rather hardcore-fan-exclusive environment, which I think severely hinders its growth. If you have a bottomless pit of money sure. But realistically how is this going to be achieved? With most of the clubs losing money every year, any more expansion would be disastrous in the long term. Chinese model = heavy corporate/government subsidy Japanese model = huge emphasis on profitability and grassroots development
Ok I think you brought up a good point how Japanese players don't tend to flock to the desert or CSL. Why do you think this is the case, and if the money isn't the issue then what is exactly?
This started as a reaction to the loss, yes, but don't you think something like this is needed anyway? Does anyone have a link to the video where LYP talks about the K League? He had a couple of ideas of his own iirc
I think it comes back to K-League. I think the principal reason is job security. While this is not a problem for players playing for richer, conglomerate-backed clubs like Jeonbuk or Seoul, clubs like Incheon or Gwangju have struggled to pay their players every year without fail. Secondly, and this is nothing more than a theory, but I think it's to do with the agents. The quality of agents aren't great in Korea, and from the past (Ahn debacle, Hwang debacle, etc...) we see many agents acting in their interest rather than acting in the players' interest, and I can imagine a lot of them getting tons of agent fees to make these CSL desert league moves to happen.