Verbeek’s Team Ready to Face Taiwan

At last, Verbeek’s Team will fight their first battle. The Taegeuk Warriors who departed for Taiwan on August 14 will play against Taiwan in the second round of Group B’s 2007 Asian Cup preliminary match at Chungsan Stadium, Taipei on August 16 at 7:00 p.m. KST.

Attention is being focused on what techniques coach Pim Verbeek will order to deal with Taiwan. He once said, “Taiwan is weak, and will likely concentrate on defensive tactics,” adding, “I have chosen players who have strong striking abilities.” The problem comes down to figuring out how to break through Taiwan’s tight defense and score a large number of goals.

During the summoned training period, coach Verbeek often used the technique of passing the ball from center midfield to the left and right sides, and then crossing the ball back to the center. This means that instead of breaking through the tight midfield defense directly, the team will look for goal chances by attacking from the sides.

Following this, the role of left and right wing strikers has become increasingly important. The right wing will likely be Lee Chun-soo (Ulsan), who is on a positive streak after recently scoring six goals in the 2006 A3 Champions Cup. For the left wing, it looks like there will be tough competition between Park Joo-young (Seoul) and Choi Sung-kuk (Ulsan).

Verbeek asked for active overlapping from the left and right defenders Jang Hack-young (Seongnam) and Oh Bum-suk (Pohang). Another part that Verbeek added in his intensive training course was making use of an inside shooting style using both feet to hit a medium distance shot. The team was trained so that when a player at the center of the penalty area makes a short pass to a player just outside of the box, the player would receive the ball and switch inside his feet from left to right and then kick the ball exactly into the corner of the goal net. Kim Jung-woo (Nagoya) and Kim Doo-hyun (Seongnam) showed the highest chances of scoring goals with this tactic. .

Another point worth eyeing is the set piece play which the team concentrated on in morning training on August 14. Lee Chun-soo practiced his right-footed free kick while Lee Eul-yong (Seoul) practiced his left-footed kick, and Kim Jin-kyu (Iwata) worked on his long-distance shooting. The team also polished up their corner kicks, led by Jang Hack-young and Song Jong-kuk (Suwon).

Korea currently has three winning points in Preliminary Group B with Iran, Syria and Taiwan. Taiwan is a weak team, ranked in 149th place in the FIFA rankings, and has already lost 0-4 to both Iran and Syria. Korea is stronger when looking at previous match results with 13 wins, one tie and six loses. After losing 0-1 at 1967 Asian Cup Preliminaries, Korea has had seven straight wins.

But Korea has had a particularly tough time in the Asian Cup. After winning the cup in 1956 and 1960, they have had nothing to do with a win for nearly a half century.

The Taiwan match will be closely observed to see whether Verbeek’s first goal to win the Asian Cup will be a success. Meanwhile, ahead of the match against Taiwan, coach Verbeek gave the captain armband to ‘vacuum cleaner’ Kim Nam-il (Age 29, Suwon) on August 14.

jaeyuna@donga.com