The Olympic team, which had been squeaky from the composition of the squad, finally accepted the bitter ending of failing to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The Olympic team, led by head coach Hwang Sun-hong, failed to compete with Indonesia 2-2 in the quarterfinals of the 2024 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U23 Asian Cup at Abdullah bin Khalifa Stadium in Doha, Qatar, on the 26th (Korea time), and was eliminated after losing 10-11 after a penalty shootout.
This year’s event was very important to the national Olympic team. Korea needs to advance to the semifinals to qualify for the Paris Olympics. Korea, which wanted to achieve the feat of advancing to the Olympics for 10 consecutive times, had to succeed at the U23 Asian Cup.
However, he was shaken up in the preparation process. After Jurgen Klinsmann’s replacement, Hwang temporarily left the Olympic team for the A-match team in March to take over as interim coach. During the period, Korean Olympic team played the Western Asian Football Confederation U23 Championship. In the prelude to the U23 Asian Cup, Hwang failed to check players’ performance in person.
The final roster for the U23 Asian Cup has constantly changed. In preparation for the U23 Asian Cup, Hwang made efforts to recruit players from overseas leagues including Yang Hyun-joon (Celtic, Scotland), Kim Ji-soo (Brentford, England), and Bae Joon-ho (Stock City, England) to prepare for the U23 Asian Cup. However, because the schedule was clearly burdensome for his team, and it was not mandatory to recruit players for the team, Hwang ultimately failed to join the national team.
Of course, it is true that Yang Hyun-joon, Kim Ji-soo, and Bae Joon-ho are players who can have a great influence on the national team by age because they just give up. Nevertheless, there was a high risk of including players who were uncertain about whether to join during the international competition, which was not obligated to call up. No matter how much communication was made in advance, Yang Hyun-joon was an essential player for his team in the competition for Celtic’s championship and Bae Joon-ho was in the competition for staying in Stoke, so it was better to set up a list, assuming that he could not be called up. It may be a result theory, but from a long-term perspective, it was better to form an Olympic team and promote organizational power, excluding players who were uncertain from the WAFF U23 Championship.
Strictly speaking, 메이저사이트 the U23 Asian Cup is a competition in which a team aiming for the Olympics should have advanced to the semifinals regardless of whether or not it plays overseas. Hong Si-hoo (Incheon United), Kim Dong-jin (Pohang Steelers) and Choi Kang-min (Ulsan HD), who were selected instead of the three players mentioned above, were all at least semi-mainstream players in the K-League. The Olympic team had many key K-League players and overseas players, including Kim Min-woo (Dusseldorf, Germany) and Jeong Sang-min (Minnesota United, the U.S.).
The fact that the European team’s recruitment influenced the qualifying round for the Olympics shows that the Olympic team lacked capacity in many ways. Whether it was seeking sufficient measures to recruit the European team to compete in the U23 Asian Cup without the European team, contemplating ahead of time how to stage the U23 Asian Cup, or raising the competence of its players with tactical capabilities, there were plenty of ways to make the Olympic team play well. Failure to recruit the European team can never be an excuse.