Olympic national team coach is picking 'separately', the problem is 'Only 2 Asian Chapters' is the most difficult ever

*This content was translated by AI.

The Korea Football Association will appoint a new national team coach to prepare for the 2028 Los Angeles (LA) Olympics. Lee Min-sung, head coach of the U-23 national soccer team, plans to lead only until the Aichi and Nagoya Asian Games in September this year, and appoint a separate head coach who will focus on the LA Olympics two years later.

According to the Korea Football Association, the association's power reinforcement committee (Chairman Hyun Young-min) announced on the 10th that it has decided to quickly promote the appointment of a coach for the Olympic team separate from the Asian Games team in order to operate the preparation system for the Olympics separately early. Coach Lee Min-sung intends to lead the Asian Games national team (U-23) and appoint a separate coach to lead the Olympic team (U-21), which consists of players under the age of 21 (U-21) as of this year.

In the meantime, the head coach of the U-23 national team has led both the Asian Games and the Olympics. However, the gap between the two competitions is two years, and most of the athletes who participated in the Asian Games were unable to participate in the Olympics two years later due to age restrictions, so they had to set up a new Olympic team for a short period of time. Moreover, the LA Olympics are likely to have a preliminary schedule earlier than the previous competitions. In response, the Korea Football Association made a plan to prepare for the Olympics as soon as possible by appointing a new coach for the U-21 national team.

The question is how easy it is to appoint a new head coach for the LA Olympics as the Korean Football Association wishes. In particular, with the Asian qualifying round for the LA Olympics confirmed to be held at an all-time high level, the biggest question is whether a coach can easily come out with a truly "poisoned Holy Grail."

In fact, the number of teams that advanced to the men's soccer finals at the LA Olympics has decreased from 16 teams to 12 teams, including the host country, the United States. There are only two tickets to the finals in Asia now. The Asian qualifying round for the LA Olympics will be held as the 2028 tournament of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U-23 Asian Cup, where Lee Min-sung was ranked fourth after losing to Vietnam. Only two teams that make it to the finals can make it to the finals of the Los Angeles Olympics.

Only two times (2016 and 2020) have Korean football reached the final of the tournament at the AFC U-23 Asian Cup. In the last three competitions, they were eliminated early in the order of the quarterfinals in 2022, the quarterfinals in 2024, and the semifinals in 2026. Amid Japan's strong performance, which won its first two consecutive wins in the tournament, China and Vietnam also made a splash at the tournament, which ended last month. Uzbekistan is also considered a strong team in this age group. Looking back on Korea's U-23 soccer competitiveness, we cannot be sure that it will pass the Olympic qualifying round two years later.

A new coach who takes the helm of the Olympic team must eventually have the ability to overcome this all-time difficulty, and at the same time, the coach himself must be willing to challenge himself boldly. It can be a great achievement if you reach the Olympic finals through fierce competition, but if the "Olympics without Korean football" is repeated following the last Paris Olympics after being eliminated from the Olympic qualifying round, a strong backlash is inevitable. It is unclear whether it will be possible to appoint a "competitive" head coach who can bear this criticism intact.

If the Asian Games had chosen "change" as the head coach of the U-21 national team, which is guaranteed, the story could have been different. As the Asian Games are subject to military service exceptions, South Korea's motivation is different. Even Japan, the host country, is playing as a U-21 national team without a wild card, which is a tournament in which other national teams are greatly less interested. If the team switched to the new head coach's U-21 national team system from the Asian Games in September and made the most of the wild card, the attempt to win four consecutive Asian Games was well worth trying. Like other teams playing in the Asian Games as an Olympic team such as Japan, the effect could be expected in terms of continuity.

However, while the Korea Football Association gave Lee Min-sung, the coach of the U-23 national team, an opportunity to recover his honor through the Asian Games, it put a huge burden on the coach of the Olympic team, who will take the helm. Coach Lee Min-sung, who was only in an extreme slump at the AFC U-23 Asian Cup last month, took the opportunity to challenge for a relatively less burdensome Asian Games gold medal. If he wins the top of the tournament, coach Lee Min-sung will finish his term as the head coach of the Asian Games gold medal.

On the other hand, the new coach, who will take the helm of the Olympic team, should focus on the competition for the finals, which has only two tickets apart from the Asian Games. You have to take the helm with a heavy task in the first place. Until the end of the Asian Games in September, various restrictions will inevitably follow, such as delaying the priority of the call-up of U-21 players who overlap with the Asian Games national team. Finding a head coach who can handle all these situations is by no means an easy task. The plan of the Korea Football Association and the Korea Power Enhancement Committee is to prepare for the LA Olympics faster, but rather, this choice may make the situation of Korean soccer more twisted.

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*This content was translated by AI.