Ha Seok-joo, vice chairman of the Korea Football Association, watched the game from the headquarters with university coaches at Jecheon Football Center in Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province, on the 26th, when the 57th presidential gold medal match was in full swing. Ha, who is in charge of amateur soccer, is traveling around the country to tour the ongoing high school soccer tournament.
“Our players are playing hard,” said Ha, who has been watching the ground for a long time. “However, compared to the past, the competitiveness of Korean high school football is decreasing day by day.” Both inside and outside the soccer community are agonizing over this issue.
In elementary, middle, and high school academy sports, the weekend league system has been introduced since 2009 to guarantee student players’ right to study, and there are many voices in the field that it needs to be supplemented. It is said that absolute training time has been greatly reduced, and the supply and demand of players is on alert as we enter the era of low birth rate.
Another problem is that although the K-League 1 (division 1) to K4 (division 4) has been structurally developed, the impact on amateur soccer is not significant considering the poor lower league conditions. Currently, the number of college football teams reaching 80 is also on the verge of collapse.
Vice Chairman Ha, who has coached Pohang Steelers, Gyeongnam FC, Jeonnam Dragons, as well as Ajou University, his alma mater, said, “It’s good to follow good systems such as Europe and Japan, but we need to think about a system that suits us. In Europe, it is established to foster players in club teams by age, but we don’t. We need a Korean-style system that can save middle, high school, and college football.” In the Seoul metropolitan area, such as Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, environmental factors that lack space for night training after class were also cited as a disappointing point.
Ha said, “Even in college, there can be a player who bursts out like Cho Kyu-sung (Mit Willan). However, many players drop out of college football these days. Professional teams need to systematically manage players by giving them opportunities to play more by utilizing the semi-professional player system, just like in Japanese soccer, rather than simply recruiting college players.” 안전놀이터
“The European youth team system is said to be ideal, but in reality, Korea has an entrance examination system,” said Park Jong-kwan, head coach of Dankook University’s soccer team. “We need to foster and manage players accordingly.” He also said, “There are no competitions during the semester (due to the guarantee of learning rights), so our players hold competitions when it is the hottest and coldest. I think this should be supplemented,” he said. “The reality is that it is difficult to say that the players’ academic achievement has increased compared to the past by uniformly taking classes. We will have to put our heads together with the leaders in the field to discuss this a lot.”