A Reflection on Korea Republic’s 2026 World Cup Campaign

This one hurts. A lot. It sickens me to even think about this South Africa match; suffice to say I will not be posting a full recap of this one. I don’t even want to dissect our World Cup performance in this post, or dwell on what went wrong. Everything went wrong. It even sickens me to see a World Cup game live on TV while I walk around town, or get notifications from my friends talking about the World Cup on group chats. Call me petty, but the video of the South African team bumping into Lee Kang In and Hwang In Beom while they were in the middle of their media interview with ZERO remorse, the disrespect (deserved, but disrespect nonetheless) from Hugo Broos towards our team, the Mexican fans throwing bottles and trash at Lee Kang In, and the Mexican fans loving us one moment but disrespecting us the next… all rub me the wrong way. I’m tired of this “Mexican Korean bromance” narrative all over the news. They were gracious hosts sure and I thank them for that, but in the end, we were just opposition for them to beat. We as a culture are way too respectful and deferential. The rest of the world won’t be like that towards us, and we shouldn’t be like that towards them.

To add insult to injury the goalscorer of Canada 1-0 South Africa today was Eustáquio who plays for… LAFC. It just wasn’t the guy from LAFC who was supposed to score. The manager for Canada? Jesse Marsch, who back in 2023 went on interview saying that he wanted the Korea job before the KFA 꼰대s asked “who is that?” and ignored every principle they explicitly outlined in the managerial selection process to inexplicably pick HMB instead. The narrative was that we had the easiest group imaginable and we had the strongest squad on paper, and per the FIFA narrative Mexico was supposed to get first place and play their RO32 and 16 at the Azteca, while we get 2nd and play in LA in what would surely be a sold-out home game for us. We were supposed to beat Canada (very doable on paper) and try to put up a fight against the Netherlands or Morocco. Yet our own incompetence held us back. Squandering the most forgiving World Cup in history, the easiest group we’ve ever gotten, the easiest RO32 opponent we could’ve asked for (on paper), and one of the strongest squads we’ve fielded in any World Cup.

We here at the Tavern love the South Korea national football team to death and we will always be biased towards our team, but we know very well we’re not serious contenders for the World Cup. We even begrudgingly acknowledge that we’re leagues behind Japan. But even acknowledging the reality, that we’re simply not good enough to make a deep run at a World Cup, this edition was a massively disappointing underperformance.

All I wanted was for us to have a decent World Cup appropriate for our personnel and standing in the world (probably RO32 or RO16, if we’re lucky maybe RO8). The team we had this WC was essentially exactly the same team that made it to the RO16 in 2022 at the expense of Uruguay and Ghana, but even stronger, upgraded by better CFs and an entire backline of European based footballers.

All I wanted was for us to actually take advantage of such a easy group and let the history books show that we made it out of the group stages two consecutive tournaments for the first time in our history.

All I wanted was a proper last World Cup for aging legends Son Heung Min, Lee Jae Sung, and likely also Kim Seung Gyu and Cho Hyun Woo.

All I wanted was for us to not embarrass ourselves as we have losing to South Africa and getting knocked out of an expanded World Cup where even third placed teams make it to the knockouts.

Most of all, all I wanted was for the world to acknowledge our criminally underrated team and flip the narrative that South Korea is more than just Heung-Min Son

All I wanted was for the normies such as my friends who support Real Madrid or Barcelona (normal fans who support a club team, not us Korean fans who exclusively support the KNT, Korean footballers abroad, and Korean football in general) to see that we are indeed one of the best in Asia and competitive on the world stage. Obviously, we haven’t achieved that (quite the opposite actually and now the whole world sees Korean football as garbage) while Japan – the team that is incessantly glazed by the media – has.

My desire isn’t for the media to glaze us like they do Japan, of course. I’m not jealous of the attention at all, although there is some good to it such as inflated transfermarkt values and higher likelihood of higher quality transfers. We need to get our men into top European squads too. One of the things that foreign media love to bring up is that Japan has a squad entirely playing in Europe. But so can we? We too are a team capable of fielding an entirely European based lineup (minus GK but that’s generally been a strong position for us) and on paper we should be competitive with them. With a squad like this there is absolutely no excuse to be playing as poorly as we have.

• GK: Kim Seung Gyu or Cho Hyun Woo, K League or J League
• LB: Jens Castrop, Borussia Monchengladbach, Germany
• CB: Kim Min Jae, Bayern Munich, Germany
• CB: Lee Han Beom, Midtjylland, Denmark (overdue for a top league transfer)
• RB: Seol Young Woo, Crvena Zvezda, Serbia (overdue for a top league transfer)
• CM: Hwang In Beom, Feyenoord, Netherlands (long overdue for a top league transfer)
• CM: Paik Seung Ho, Birmingham City, England
• CAM: Lee Jae Sung, FSV Mainz, Germany
• RW: Lee Kang In, Paris Saint Germain, France
• LW: Son Heung Min, can’t leave him out
• FW: Oh Hyeon Gyu, Besiktas, Turkey

Sure, our top talents LKI and KMJ are first off the bench options for their respective clubs PSG and Bayern but there is no one arguing that KMJ isn’t the best CB in Asia and LKI isn’t the best attacking midfielder in Asia. Everyone else is an established starter for club. Sure, Son is a bit off form, but everyone knows he is still extremely dangerous. Our South African opponents were just as puzzled as us Korean fans were to see him start off the bench, and their media outlets as well as Hugo Broos stated that they were thankful to not have to face him early on.

The media also glazes Japan for their depth. They obviously beat us in this regard (a few injuries spell disaster for us while it’s nothing for them) and they have way more players in Europe than us, but we’ve come a long way in terms of depth too. How about this 3-4-3 HMB has forced on us with only two CBs kept the same, just to highlight our depth? This Korea B team should be more than capable of beating any AFC squad minus Japan or Australia… on paper that is.

• GK: the other GK
• LWB: Lee Tae Seok, FK Austria Wien, Austria
• LCB: Kim Ji Soo, Brentford FC, England [hearing he may go back to England from Germany this season]
• CB: Kim Min Jae, Bayern Munich, Germany
• RCB: Lee Han Beom, Midtjylland, Denmark
• RWB: Yang Hyun Jun, Celtic FC, Scotland
• CM: Hong Hyeon Seok, Gent, Belgium
• CM: Kwon Hyeok Kyu, Karlsruher, Germany
• LW: Bae Jun Ho, Stoke City, England
• RW: Hwang Hee Chan, Wolverhampton, England
• FW: Cho Gue Sung, Midtjylland, Denmark

I was really hoping that we could prove ourselves on the world stage, get more of our men in top European clubs, and get more scouts into the K League. Sadly, this World Cup will likely result in the complete opposite. I just wanted a chance for our boys to shine; for us to finally flip those criminally undervalued transfermarkt values; for Hwang In Beom to stop being the undisputed best player of small teams and move to a top 4 league; for Lee Han Beom to make his breakout move to a top 4 league having outgrown Denmark; for Seol Young Woo, one of Champions League side Crvena Zvezda’s best players, to finally get that move to England or Germany as rumored over the past few years; same with Bae Jun Ho, the “Stoke City King” unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) out with injury; for Oh Hyeon Gyu who had a transfer to Stuttgart inexplicably cancelled due to a prior knee surgery move to bigger leagues; and for our K League breakout star in Lee Gi Hyeok to get his big move abroad.

I know that we here at the Tavern bring up Japan a lot, and perhaps sometimes unnecessarily, but the comparisons are inevitable given that they get right all the things we get wrong and given that they’ve outdone us in such a short period of time. We used to make fun of Japan in the 90’s and 2000s for their ineffective and 어설픈 “sushi-taka.” We could confidently and consistently beat them on any given day. But they’ve effectively executed their 10, 20, 30, 50, 100-year visions and look how the tables have turned. In just a generation, so many footballers in Japan have the basics down and can telepathically, unconsciously slot into their system. Everyone in the world knows that they’re a country mile ahead of us in football despite never having produced a footballer on the caliber of Park Ji Sung or Son Heung Min. Meanwhile what have we done? Lived off of the high of a ref-assisted semifinal run? Relied upon a handful of superstars? Let toxicity fester in the KFA with zero indication that we want to improve it? Back in 2014 we referred to the KNT managerial position as a “poisoned chalice” and this description still holds today, See how many managers we’ve gone through since 2010 and the wild diversity of philosophies each one had. You CANNOT build an international side like this.

• Huh Jung Moo – 2008-2010 World Cup, emphasized aggression, physicality, brought out the best in the double dragons + Park Ji Sung
• Cho Kwang Rae – 2010-2011, possession based play, ambitious 만화축구 emulating Spain
• Choi Kang Hee – 2011-2013, 뻥축구 kick and rush, openly favored K League over European based players, causing locker room fights
• Hong Myung Bo – 2013-2014 WC, frustrating stagnant U-ball
• Shin Tae Yong – interim post 2014 WC
• Stielike – 2014-2017, not much different from HMB, frustrating stagnant play, didn’t have a philosophy but more of “Son Heung Min do your thing please”
• Shin Tae Yong again – 2017-2018 WC – the trickster who had ONE good game against Germany where we executed a 4-4-2 low block well, otherwise over-tinkered and tried some wild stuff all of which failed
• Paulo Bento – 2018-2022 – possession and build-up based football but more pragmatic than Choi Kwang Rae; wasn’t great and had some poor results too but the ONE TIME we had consistency in our manager
• Jurgen Klinsmann – 2023-2024 – not even sure what he was trying to do
• Hwang Sun Hong – interim for 2 games post asian cup
• Kim Do Hoon – interim for 2 games, did kind of well actually
• Hong Myung Bo again – hasn’t changed, frustratingly stagnant and conservative, not playing to win but playing not to lose

Meanwhile Japan has only had 5 managers from 2010 to now, one of whom was a brief interim manager (between Halilhodžić and Moriyasu). Their FA actually knows football and picks managers based on their core philosophy and play style, while ours is plagued by cronyism and corruption (the results above speak for themselves). Our FA 꼰대s don’t know who household names like Ruben Amorim or Jesse Marsch are. Their FA is run by Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, an actual footballer who actually cares about football. Ours is run by… a Hyundai executive? (Always found that really weird.) They want to do well at World Cups; our FA seemingly does not care, and prefers to enrich the pockets of people who went to the same university as the execs. They have had consistency for decades now, with a reliable process and infrastructure to develop talent and maximize the talent they currently have. We are running dry, regressing and stagnating, somehow overachieving and producing generational talent like KMJ, SHM, and LKI despite old infrastructure not nearly as good as Japan, South America, or Europe. Japanese media constantly berates us for the fact that our footballers from the 2002 era are spending all their time on TV or YouTube rather than actually studying football and management – they ran this article again this year, after having ran this headline back in 2022 as well. Tsuneyasu Miyamoto is a 2002 Japan World Cup international. What are our guys doing? Lee Chun Soo is on YouTube, Park Joo Ho is also on YouTube, Ahn Jung Hwan is the MC for a cooking show (that I admittedly like to watch) and Park Ji Sung and Lee Young Pyo are mostly commentating on TV.

This irritates me a lot, and hopefully something that changes. All the people who you’d THINK would be running the KFA haven’t taken action. In their defense Park Joo Ho and Park Ji Sung and Lee Young Pyo at one point did have posts at the KFA but were essentially bullied / laughed off by the establishment when they wanted to implement any of their ideas. Hence why everyone is calling for the KFA to be completely dismantled personnel-wise.

• Park Ji-sung: was appointed as the KFA’s Youth Strategy Director in November 2017 to revamp the country’s youth development system. However, his tenure was short-lived, and he stepped down in December 2018. Insiders and media reports at the time noted that he grew highly frustrated because the rigid, old-guard establishment resisted his reform-minded, European-inspired ideas, leaving him with very little actual authority.
• Park Joo-ho: his experience was probably the most infuriating. As a member of the KFA’s National Teams Committee, he spent months trying to vet foreign managers through a professional process. When he publicly exposed how the committee completely bypassed proper procedures to unilaterally appoint Hong Myung-bo, he revealed that older committee members openly looked down on him during meetings, dismissing his input because he “had never been a head coach before”. The KFA even threatened legal action against him for speaking out, proving the immense friction between the young reformers and the entrenched establishment.
• Koo Ja Cheol: didn’t have a position but publicly backed Park Joo-ho when the KFA threatened Park with legal action for exposing their corrupt hiring process. Koo openly slammed the systemic dysfunction and lack of protection for anyone trying to speak the truth within Korean football administration
• Lee Young-pyo: served as a KFA Vice President starting in 2021. He ultimately resigned in April 2023 along with the rest of the board following a massive public backlash over the KFA’s sudden, out-of-touch decision to pardon 100 individuals banned from football—including match-fixers from the 2011 K League scandal. Lee publicly apologized, realizing that trying to steer the federation from within a highly administrative, top-down establishment was ineffective.
• Lee Dong Gook and Cho Won Hee (also active Youtubers): Alongside Lee Young-pyo, both players were brought into the KFA leadership administration to lend their credibility to the board. However, they quickly realized they had zero actual influence over systemic, top-down decisions made by the entrenched executives. When the old guard unilaterally pushed through the disastrous 2023 decision to secretly pardon 100 individuals banned for match-fixing, both players were left completely out of the loop. Realizing they were essentially being used as public relations shields for an out-of-touch establishment, they resigned in protest along with Lee Young Pyo. Cho Won Hee later publicly spoke out, stating he was left speechless by how the KFA operated behind closed doors.

Looking to the future:

As of a few hours ago Hong Myung Bo has officially resigned from his post. It was the most typical HMB presser ever – zero remorse, zero accountability. He gave the announcement then promptly fled the scene, casually with his hands in his pockets, without answering any questions. The man is the definition of tone deaf and narcissistic. In his prior pressers he kept saying how he doesn’t understand why we played this bad and essentially blamed the players for the result despite saying he would take responsibility as the manager for the bad outcome. He cannot acknowledge that his stubbornness and inflexibility cost us TWO World Cups now. He STILL doesn’t understand why we lost even though it’s clear as day for any Korean watching the games, and to this day he is probably confused why people were so upset by his hiring last year. He will not fly back to Korea with the players, probably to avoid having 엿 thrown at him again, or worse. I don’t even know who our next manager will be, nor do I have the bandwidth to go through this dumb process all over again. We have countless “next manager posts” here on the Tavern, and this time I just do not have the mental capacity to go through it again.

So at this point in the 4 year cycle, the endless debate of how to reform Korean football will inevitably resurface (it already has). We’ve covered this ad nauseum and even have a “reform” category on our site because of how often this comes up, so I will not go into it in detail here. For example we discussed this EXACT issue in 2013, 2014, 2018, AND after 2022. I see endless “HMB bad” “KFA bad” “HMB symptom of KFA” “we have to destroy it all and rebuild” posts all over social media. Are you guys not tired of this? Haven’t we been seeing these types of posts for decades now?

The real question is, will things be different this time? The way things usually go, our manager steps down, we rush to find a mediocre manager, fail to win the Asian Cup again, fire that manager then underperform at the World Cup, and repeat.

Well, this time there is some hope that things will be different. The KFA has been under investigation by the government for the past year due to its controversial managerial hiring process. The wasting of a generational talent pool, the widespread disgust with the 고려대 favoritism, the horrific and very well publicized managerial hiring process, the gradually declining attendance at NT matches, and a social media amplification of anger available today but not as widespread back in 2014 or 2018 – might all converge to produce results this time. Even President Lee Jae Myung took to social media to voice his concerns, something I did not see coming but very much welcome:

As a former honorary professional football club owner and a passionate supporter (“Red Devil”) at heart, I feel beyond astounded—utterly dumbfounded—by this unexpected result.

Ultimately, it has been proven once again that “personnel management is everything.” If we select an incompetent person as a commander because we prioritize factions (“our side vs. their side”) over capability, the disastrous outcome is as clear as day.

The reason why such absurd personnel decisions—failing to distinguish between public and private matters and prioritizing personal interest over the public good—are possible is because monitoring, balancing, and holding the appointing authority accountable is either impossible or extremely difficult.

In the end, for any organization, democratic composition and control, as well as the alignment of authority and responsibility, are crucial.

Establishing a democratic leadership structure in the private sector and establishing an objective monitoring and balancing system is a major national task of this government.

Just as the composition of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NongHyup) executives was changed to a direct election by members, I gave instructions to provide administrative guidance so that sports organizations—such as the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee or the Korea Football Association—adopt a direct election system by all related sports personnel, rather than a minority indirect election system by a narrow circle of delegates. I understand this is being implemented well.

Building a strict system of checks and balances for transparency, fairness, and objectivity in operations, and making people bear corresponding responsibilities for their actions and results, is also an important task.

This failure to advance to the World Cup finals, which has left the public feeling devastated, appears to be a failure of organization and personnel management.

As a massive amount of public tax money and national support resources are invested in competing in the World Cup, I ask the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to thoroughly look into the exact situation of this incident, analyze the causes, and meticulously prepare measures for improvement and prevention of recurrence.

I am deeply sorry for causing profound disappointment to the public through such an absurd situation. We will swiftly push forward reforms in sports administration so that something like this never happens again.

From our Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism:

We failed to make it past the Round of 32.

I watched with bated breath, but the result is elimination from the group stage.

It is deeply regrettable. My heart aches so much that I don’t know what to do; I just stared blankly at the sky.

South Korean football has fallen into a quagmire. Now, we must gather our thoughts and start over from the very bottom.

It is time to sort through the countless discussions we have frequently had, find where things started to go wrong and what the root cause holding us back was, and create a fundamental alternative.

Until the day the hearts of our citizens unite once again, the government will step up and take care of everything it can do.

South Korean football may have fallen, but it will absolutely rise again.

So hopefully… maybe THIS time will be different? Famous last words, but I really hope that it is. I’m a little worried FIFA might take action because they don’t look kindly on politics meddling in football associations… we will have to walk a VERY delicate line to avoid FIFA punishment. Even with the best intentions in mind (actual reform not political harassment) FIFA has zero tolerance for any political interference as seen with Kuwait, Indonesia, and India in recent times.

I have one more thing to ask from the general public, as well as some Tavern readers based on the comments I’m seeing after the South Africa match: PLEASE refrain from criticizing the players so much. Especially Seol Young Woo who seems to be receiving the brunt of it. They are not at fault here. Yes, they looked dreadful against and got outplayed by a vastly inferior South Africa side, but when there is literally no direction coming from the manager, when there is zero organization, nobody can play well. All those videos going around of Lee Kang In doing all the work and nobody helping him out – is not the player’s fault but the manager’s. Imagine if Hong Myung Bo was the manager of France and the French players were all Korean? They’d get knocked out early in the tournament, maybe better than us based on sheer talent, but sheer talent doesn’t get you very far in a tournament. Look at the vast difference between us and Japan, or even the difference between Urugay and Cabo Verde. Organization and coaching matters. Our players individually are excellent and are starters for top European leagues. They are not to blame. All the hate towards them on social media needs to stop. The typical Korean toxicity and reactivity also needs to stop. The anger at the KFA and the national outrage that my nonKorean friends are saying “seems like an overreaction” is very much justified and very much not an overreaction. But the blaming of the players, the media toxicity with the whole military service incident, the thousands of hate comments our netizens leave on social media – that’s not cool guys.

And finally – regardless of the horrific setback, we are Korean. We will indeed rise again. We always have, despite being a tiny country with zero natural resources, sandwiched between two imperialist global superpowers constantly invading us, permanently divided and at war due to geopolitical forces outside of our control. We here at the Tavern will continue to root for Korean football. We will continue to spread the word of Korean football to the English speaking diaspora. The all-important Asian Games (for military service exemption) is coming up in October, and the Asian Cup is on the horizon in January-February 2027. This may be a hard ask considering how much we sucked this World Cup, but I hope that with actual change at the KFA, more of us Koreans will support the team outside of the World Cup.

In the meantime,

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