Introduction     

The World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the national teams of the members of FIFA. The event has been held every four years since the first tournament in 1930 in Uruguay. Brazil has won many more titles than any other nation.

Korea`s World Cup history

The first year that Korea that participated in the World Cup was 1954. The team played games against Hungary and Turkey, but they were defeated 9-0 and 7-0 respectively. After this event, it would take thirty-two years before Korea was able to participate in the World Cup again. That was 1986. Since then, Korea has been participating steadily, but their teams didn’t manage to reach the second round until the 2002 World Cup. After the 2002 Semi-Final Miracle, Korea seemed to graduate. But last year, Korea’s preparation and performance in the 2014 Brazil World Cup was disastrous. It was the worst event in my life!

Korea`s strong opposing teams and star players in the 2002 World Cup

Now, I will introduce four strong teams that have competed against Korea in 2002, and one star player from each team.

Portugal: Around the time of the 2002 world cup, the Portuguese team was very strong and for them, this was called the second “golden age.” (The first golden age was in the 1960s.)

Luis Figo

He was a Portuguese football player. He played as a winger for Sporting CP, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Internazionale and retired on 31 May, 2009. He was an ace player of the Portugal national team during the second golden age. Except Figo, other star players exist in the team such as Rui Costa and Pauleta.

Italy: Italy has four World Cup titles, which is more than any other country except Brazil, and equal to that of Germany. The Italian team is famous for its defensive tactics, which are called “Catenaccio.”

Paolo Maldini

 He was an Italian football player. He played as a defender for AC Millan and retired in 2009. He was a very special defender in world football history, and I think he is a number one defender in world football history.

Spain: They are called be Invincible Armada. Their league (Spain Primera Liga) has two strongest pro-football clubs (Real Madrid and Fc Barcelona) in the world. It means the national team is strong when the internal league is strong.

Iker Casillas

 He is the number one goalkeeper in Spanish football history. Maybe, Spanish people think he is even better than Ricard Zamora (He was the best goalkeeper in Spanish football history and there is an award in Spanish league named after Zamora).

Germany: The team has won the same number of titles as Italy. They have always been rated highly, and last year they got a World Cup title. In many world cup competitions, they reached or came close to the semi-finals.

Michael Ballack

 He played as a midfielder for many clubs (Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Fc Bayern Munchen and Chelsea Fc). He was known for his powerful shots and physical strength. I think his body looks like a monster.

Korea`s preparation for the 2002 World Cup

The Korean national team did not perform well until the 2002 World cup. They had never advanced to the second round and had never won a match. When Korea was selected (alongside Japan) to host the 2002 World Cup, the KFA (Korea Football Association) began to worry about the team’s grade. KFA decided to appoint Guus Hiddink, from the Netherlands, as the team manager. He had achieved great success as a manager in the past. He led PSV Eindhoven to achieve the “treble” (winning the league, cup, and champions league) and brought the Dutch team to the semi-final level in the 1998 World Cup in France.

The KFA suggested to Hiddink that he withdraw the team from competition for a while and focus on camp training. However, after this retreat, results were disappointing because the Korean national team suffered consecutive crushing defeats for a while. At this time, there was a firestorm of criticism from netizens and medias directed at Hiddink. In fact, his nickname was 5-0 because his team was defeated against France and Czech 5-0 respectively. However, when the Korean team had three warm-up matches just before the World Cup, they performed differently. After, they played against Scotland, England and France, the world media were surprised about Korean`s wonderful performance.

Once the world cup began, Korea continued to show improvement and achieved the miracle of reaching the semi-final round. How did this happen? Hiddink said, consecutive matches against many strong teams were useful for overcoming fear. Even if we were defeated, we could overcome fear and great suspense. He believed that the most important thing was having the spirit, and never giving up in any situation.

If you want to see highlights of Korea’s performance during the 2002 World Cup, click here.

Conclusion

The Korean national team failed to reach the second round until the 2002 World Cup. But, they won against many strong teams and achieved the miracle of reaching the semi-final in 2002. The most important lesson here is not to be afraid of opposing teams. I think Hiddink`s lesson can apply to other areas in our lives.