Korea Republic 1-0 Mexico Official Tavern Recap

We should have won this game. We should’ve won or at least gotten a draw. I’m not sure what it was – whether they were afraid of the Lee Kang In and Kim Seung Gyu through passes into space, whether they decided to change gameplan from press+attack to defend+counter (even if all their counters were shut down), whether both teams intended to play for a draw from the start – but this was our game to lose. We dictated most of the game. They dropped their line and ceded control over to us, and their counterattacks were absolutely ineffective. Should’ve been a win out at least a draw to cancel out the fluke goal, but we couldn’t pull it off. To lose to such a toothless Mexico side due to one massive stroke of luck for them is… unbelievable. I really don’t know how to put into words how frustrated I am. Not just at the situation and how we lost, but also the way Aguirre, the fans, and the referee behaved this game. Unbelievable.

Table of contents:

• The goal
• The lineup
• The first 30-35 minutes
• The rest of the game
• Czechia 1-1 RSA and its implications for progression
• Son Heung Min
• Jens
• Hong Myung Bo
• Mexico, Aguirre, and the Ref

That goal: awful, awful, awful way to lose a game. I suspect this was a communication error + luck on Mexico’s part that they had a man right in front of Kim Seung Gyu. Catching a ball from a misplaced header that flew vertically into the air is an extremely routine move, it is just unfortunate that he landed on LGH and that the goalscorer was there. There’s debate online if this is more on KSG or more on Lee Gi Hyeok. Ideally, LGH should have moved out of the way and KSG could’ve caught it easily. Did KSG communicate to LGH that he was going for it? Did LGH stay there because he expected to head it away?

Regardless, this kind of thing should really never ever happen. I thought we were past the days of Jung Sung Ryong in 2010 and 2014… but here we are. It’s one thing if we concede because the opponent is too strong (like Korea vs Argentina in 2010). It’s one thing if we concede from an error to a team that was actively attacking us and playing better than us. We were in charge of the game when the goal went in (more on that later) and otherwise doing really well. I would’ve much preferred we lose 3-0 having actually been outplayed rather than us outplaying the opponent and losing 1-0 due to a stupid classic KNT mistake

The Lineup:

To this moment I am not entirely sure why HMB decided to go for Kim Moon Hwan RB and Seol Young Woo LB. It’s one thing if you want to go defensively (SYW RB Lee Tae Seok LB), it’s one thing if you want to go more offensively (Jens LB and SYW RB), it’s another thing if you go hyperattack as we did in the second half with Yang Hyun Jun and Eom Ji Sung as wingbacks, which is what Japan does with their WBs. Why did we go KMH and SYW? I still can’t think of nor have found an explanation for this. But otherwise, a very much expected and unsurprising lineup.

The First 30 Minutes:

Initially, Mexico played their usual way. They attacked hard with a high defensive line and had >60% of possession. Nothing dangerous came from them outside of two very routine and easily saveable shots.

We went for a similar strategy as we did against Czechia, leveraging the fact that we have men who can run into space (mostly Son, also the fullbacks), and men who can put in that killer through pass (mostly LKI and Kim Seung Gyu, but also the CBs and midfielders). We used it pretty well actually, with threatening long kicks or through passes into space vacated by LKI or LJS. For instance, one sequence saw LKI drawing defenders off their line allowing SHM to connect to a LHB through pass. A lot of SHM and SYW moves were offside, but it worked well, because Mexico marked us 1:1 super hard in the first 35 minutes. They marked us so hard that LKH was spotted saying “아무도 없어“ – he actually had no one to pass to because no one was open, so he could only obtain a throw in.

30′ Onward:

Something changed around 30-35 minutes, notably after that offsides Son Heung Min chip shot that nearly went in until it was cleared off the goalline with an overhead kick. They dropped the line deeper and stopped pressing as aggressively. Whether it was because they respected the effective move of “LKI and LJS dropping deep to draw defenders out of play for SHM and the fullbacks to run into,” whether it was intentionally planned to do this around 30-35 minutes (it definitely wasn’t after the water break) – they clearly decided to weigh more towards defending.

Presumably they changed their gameplan to “sit back and counterattack,” but every counter was just straight up ended, most notably by Kim Min Jae or Lee Han Beom. Mexico on the counterattack likes to either go wide or send the ball to Raul Jimenez to hold up play and get other players up, but KMJ won essentially every duel against him and made him invisible. Even more impressively, Lee Han Beom marked their best player Quiñones out of the game too.

Maybe Aguirre knew that we are not good at cracking open defensive teams, but it still feels like a gamble to me to give away control of a game to your opponent when all your counterattacks aren’t working. Another reason why this fluke of a goal winning the game for him is so painful.

Another interesting thing happened in response to Mexico’s shift: Lee Kang In starts to drop deep. It was as if LKI was taunting them – “if you are gonna drop deep, then come and get me.” He was the real team leader today, dictating play, spreading passes all over the pitch. But they did not come to mark him. For most of the game post-30-35 minutes, they would not come up past the halfway point. They wanted to focus on their defensive line. It was almost reminiscent of watching Middle Eastern AFC teams play us in WC qualifiers. Unsurprisingly, our attack became quite frustrating, with very few chances until the very end.

When you have an opponent that won’t come up to press, and focused on keeping their defensive shape, you need to change the game plan, and in our case we usually do one of two things: 1) tall target man in the box and cross 2) shots from distance.You can’t rely on what we were doing against Czechia and initially against Mexico.

We usually go for the former and it actually worked really well. If I had any point of criticism it’s that we didn’t make the changes fast enough. I am starting to think that an Oh Hyeon Gyu – Cho Gue Sung two top solution is actually not terrible. On at least two occasions I can recall, CGS got his head to a cross thanks to OHG’s movement drawing a defender’s path. To facilitate this we put in LKI on the left alongside EJS and let them cross. Just like the LKI-CGS connection against Ghana.

But ultimately we failed to score and let this stupid game end 1-0. Hong Myung Bo (also our NT as a whole) is really not great at breaking down turtling teams huh…

Czech 1-1 RSA:

I will post the South Africa preview eventually but for now let’s just talk about what the result means for us. I found a nice graphic online here:

That damned 경우의 수 again. Every time. Would be really nice to have secured progression early for once in the easiest group we’ve ever encountered… Anyway, the situation now is that a win or draw with RSA means 2nd place and playing in LA. Losing to RSA will either make us 3rd place, or if Czechia beats Mexico, we get eliminated.

The real unfortunate thing to losing against Mexico is that we don’t have a cushion anymore. It would’ve been fantastic to rest our starters as well as yellow card accumulated players like LKI (though I believe yellows are wiped after the group stage). At least in this WC we get 6-7 days of rest.

Also the second game curse continues – we’ve never won a second game. Every second game since 2010 we’ve lost (Argentina, Mexico, Ghana, now Mexico AGAIN), and before that we’ve drawn 1-1 with both France and the USA. If you go further back than 2002, we’re winless.

A few random talking points:

Son Heung Min’s substitution: people are saying he was subbed too early but I don’t necessarily agree. The way SHM is being used is incredibly taxing. Man’s expected to run up and down the pitch, run into the space behind defenders, and chase long balls – all at the age of 33, 34 if you wait another 2-3 weeks. Not an easy thing to do and begs the question – is this the most effective way of using SHM at his age? It clearly was the right answer many years ago but back then our NT managers didn’t use him effectively. Admittedly, he wasn’t super tired when he was subbed and maybe it would’ve been better to move him from CF to LW or RW (as opposed to HHC), but whether he was taken off at 57’ or a bit later, not a huge difference. Our attack was so poor around that time anyway, we needed a change. Unfortunate that the subs didn’t have much of an impact this game.

Jens: weird to see a top left wingback in the Bundesliga not playing for us. I don’t know if he would’ve made it to Germany’s NT but surely he didn’t switch allegiance to us to sit on the bench. People are saying that against Mexico when we need to play more defensively we shouldn’t have used Jens, but considering we went Seol Young Woo and Kim Moon Hwan, I don’t buy it (KMH is the more attack minded and faster FB than LTS). I do think Jens Castrop will make his World Cup debut eventually though. Against SA is a safer bet because we are expected to go more offensively against them than the other teams. HMB probably doesn’t have the cojones to start Yang or Eom from the start (not saying that we should, just saying it’s not likely).

HMB: I don’t think this game’s result was on him at all. Man’s gotten a lot of criticism the leading up to the WC but at the WC we’ve played well. Much better than we did in friendlies, and outside of the fluke goal we played well without being able to score a goal (typical for Korea). The one thing I question is why Seol Young Woo and Kim Moon Hwan – why does so much of our attack go through fullbacks that are more defensive minded than attack minded? HMB must be really wishing he had guys like Nuno Mendes or Achraf Hakimi (ok every team wishes they had these guys as arguably the best fullbacks in the world but you get the point – they are extremely potent in attack).

Mexican fans, Aguirre, and the ref

We always expected some bias from the ref. Just as we got favorable ref calls in 2002, the home team always gets favorable treatment. But I did not expect THIS level of bias. Not a single foul or card for Mexico today (is it because they got so many cards last game?) and to my recollection we had 0 free kicks all game, and 0 corners until the very end of the game. Meanwhile if we even so much as touched these guys, we got yellow cards. The refs were also from South America (the main ref is from Uruguay) – the second I saw that I had a feeling it’d be this kind of game. I guess if the game ended 1-1 I’d be less mad about this, but here we are.

We also always expected that although the Mexico fans were on our side Korea vs Czechia, by the time Korea vs Mexico rolled around they’d be booing us, throwing things, or making the slanted eyes racist sign (all my friends who accompanied me to Korea vs Czechia talked about it, and many people I know avoided going to this specific game because of the danger posed by Mexican fans if their team lost). Unsurprisingly, every single one of those things happened today. They booed every touch we had, they threw things at Lee Kang In during his two corner kicks, and I’m sure somewhere in the stands Mexico fans were making the slanted eye gesture at us. The recent incident with that one Instagram influencer just happened to be a high profile one, but this kind of thing is commonplace in Latin America and Spain. It happened to a ton during my brief study abroad in Spain (they just greet you with the slanted eyes for some reason, and refer to all Asians as “chinos”), and even Rodrigo Bentancur of Tottenham did it to Son.

Finally, we come to Aguirre and the Mexico NT. I understand Aguirre really needed the win considering this is Mexico’s home World Cup but so classless from him towards the end of the game. The first thing that really pissed me off was him obstructing Yang Hyun Jun’s throw in. He literally blocked YHJ from getting to the ball. The stream I was watching from featured Lee Young Pyo in commentary and he pointed this out as well. The second incident that pissed me off was when Yang Hyun Jun was on the floor having received studs to the chest (or was it the stomach?) and he was complaining to the ref and gesturing for YHJ to get up. I didn’t realize how classless Aguirre can be and I definitely lost a lot of respect for him.

The footballers themselves also had a bit of time wasting and “getting on our nerves” typical CONCACAF/COMNEBOL shenanigans that I despise so much, and I seriously applaud Lee Kang In for actually fighting back, gesturing to Erik Lira to shut up at the end of the game. We need to really drop the whole deference/respect BS because clearly, most of the world isn’t that nice.

Looking ahead: Posts on whether we prefer to be 1st or 2nd, and the South Africa preview, to be up within the next week!