Hong Myung-bo, a '26-member full group', trained for the first time at night to avoid Iraq's '45-degree' steamer
Hong Myung-bo, a '26-member full group', trained for the first time at night to avoid Iraq's '45-degree' steamer
Blog Article
Hong Myung-bo, who went on an expedition to Iraq to play the Asian qualifiers for the North Korea-China World Cup, became one with 26 members and conducted the first training session in Iraq.
The national soccer team, led by head coach Hong Myung-bo, will play its ninth Group B match against Iraq at 3:15 a.m. on the 6th (Korea time) at Basra International Stadium in Iraq.
Korea has four wins and four draws (16 points) in Group B, and is leading the group by beating over second-ranked Jordan (13 points) and third-ranked Iraq (12 points). With just one more point due to the draw in the match against Iraq, Korea can win a ticket to directly advance to the finals, which will be given to the second-ranked team in the group.
If the team qualifies for the finals, it will be the 11th consecutive World Cup event since the 1986 Mexico Championship. Including the 1954 Swiss Championship, which was its first event, it was the 12th in its career.
The Hong Myung-bo team headed to Iraq for a showdown on Thursday.
Son Heung-min (Tottenham) and Cho Hyun-woo (Ulsan) moved to Iraq on a chartered plane from Incheon International Airport on the 2nd, while four Middle Eastern players, including Cho Yoo-min (Sharja), came to Iraq immediately. Lee Kang-in (Paris Saint-Germain) joined the team after finishing his schedule including the team's championship event on the afternoon of the 3rd.
The team immediately began its first training session on Friday. The training started late at 9 p.m. local time for about an hour and a half to avoid the heat wave in Iraq, where the daytime highs are 45 degrees Celsius.
The Korea Football Association (KFA) said, "We conducted physical training in three groups according to the time and timing of each player's participation in the game. We conducted tactical training with small-side games for offensive and defensive position training."
It was a training session after hot weather and a long flight, but the team looked bright.
A KFA official said, "In tactical training, we used multiple players for each position, and from the first training, we started to determine the players suitable for the Iraq match." 메이저사이트
The national team will conduct one more training session on the 4th, then hold an official training and pre-press conference at Basra International Stadium on the 5th and start the showdown on the 6th.