Korean K.League Football - The Hauzen Cup and pre-season

John Duerden reports from Seoul, South Korea

The Hauzen Cup is a strange invention. It is a cup that is played in a league format, with the thirteen league teams playing each other once. In reality, it is a drawn-out pre-season in which the K-League teams play exactly the same teams as they will when the real season kicks off on May 15th.

The ‘cup' doesn't mean much in terms of prestige and, unlike the FA Cup, it doesn't guarantee qualification for the AFC Champions League and it is forgotten almost as soon as it finishes. One feels that extending the K-League season would be more beneficial. However, the twelve-game competition does at least provide some indication of which teams have something to look forward to.

There are a number of teams that appear to be heading in the right direction after two-thirds of the Hauzen Cup is over and are providing their fans with an unusual amount of pre-season optimism. The biggest such reference must go to Daegu FC. The south-eastern team are entering only their third season in existence and much progress seems to have been made in that time. Park Jong-hwan built on a difficult first season with an improved second campaign and hopes will be high in the textile city that 2005 will see the team finishing in the top half of the table.

Daegu, level on points with leaders Suwon, have achieved their results even without their ex-star striker Nonato. The Brazilian has moved to the capital on loan and before injury struck scored five goals in four games for FC Seoul.

Just a point behind the pacemakers are the usually lowly Bucheon. The SK-backed team have been bottom for the past two seasons but, despite the lack of money from the troubled corporation, Jong Hae-sung looks to have steered the team round a corner. 2004 saw the team become more difficult to beat, though that wasn't too difficult as 2003 was a catastrophic one on the pitch.

Joining the number of teams experiencing nosebleeds is Daejeon Citizen who had a disappointing 2004 after a promising season the year before. Choi Yoon-kyeom looks to have organized his defence into a miserly unit and if he manages to coax a few more goals out of his strike force then the future may be a little brighter for the 2002 FA Cup winners.

One team having no problems scoring goals, on the continent at least, is Busan I' Park. The 2004 Korean FA Cup winners have swept all before them in the AFC Champions League scoring 17 goals without reply in the four games played so far but his players have found things at home much harder going. Boss Ian Porterfield has gone on record saying that he is not too concerned about the Hauzen Cup, but with his team lying bottom of the ‘league' then cynics would suggest that he would say that wouldn't he?

Two south-western clubs who are usually chasing honors are Chunnam Dragons and Chonbuk Motors but the pre-season cup has not been a happy one down in Jeolla Province. The former have lost last year's top striker Mota and midfielder Kim Nam-il and have also misplaced their shooting boots. Still at least the season hasn't started yet.

Asian Champions League

As mentioned above, Busan have had no problem scoring goals in the continental competition. Seventeen goals and none conceded is as close to perfection as it is possible to get and though the opposition teams of Binh Dinh of Vietnam, Krung Thai Bank and Persebaya of Indonesia may not be the stiffest opposition, the way Busan have dispatched of the teams has been professional and a credit to Ian Porterfield and his coaching staff.

Tougher opposition will lie in wait in the quarter-finals but the team from Korea's second city could be the dark horses to win the Asian title for the first time since 1985.

The Champions Suwon, lie in first place in the Hauzen Cup, and level on points with Shenzhen Jianlibao in Group E of the Champions League. With two games to go, the two are locked on ten points with the Chinese champions enjoying a better goal difference. The battle for the top spot will go down to the last game of the group when the Bluewings travel to China.

Jo Bonfrere

The recent 2-1 victory in the third game of qualifying for the 2006 World Cup over Uzbekistan, lifted some of the gloom that had settled over Seoul after the 2-0 defeat in Saudi Arabia five days before.

The former coach of Nigeria has still to win over the Korean press and public and the defeat in Dammam didn't help. His bosses, the Korean Football Association (KFA) haven't forgotten that night in the Middle East, a night that was quickly labelled as "The Dammam Shock." The shock wasn't so much losing to Saudi Arabia but the lackluster performance of the team and the coach's strange tactics.

On April 11th, Lee Hoi-taek, the Vice-President of the association recently said that although the KFA would continue to give its full support to Bonfrere, they were not satisfied with the results of the national team.

After promising Bonfrere the body's full support, Lee went on to say, "that does not mean that we are satisfied with the results so far. We would be satisfied if we had won all the games in the group stage. But we had a big loss (in Saudi Arabia) and we can not say we are satisfied about that."

Lee went onto to criticise the Dutchman and his methods.
"I myself think that we have some problems in defense. And we have made many suggestions to him," Lee said. "But we can't force him to accept them. It is no use trying to persuade him. It seems that he prefers to play with the old members than to try new players. He said he will make the team stronger by improving their teamwork instead."

Park Chu-young

The Asian Football Confederation's Young Player of the Year for 2004 joined FC Seoul in March. The 19-year-old left Korea University to join LG's team amid a growing media circus that has seen the boy christened ‘Asia's Rooney' but the attention seems to be increasingly of Beckhamesque proportions.

Park, lit up the Asian Youth Championships in 2004 with six goals and a winners medal and the skilful forward is starting to find his feet in the capital and talks of a call-up the national side are no longer dismissed out of hand by Jo Bonfrere.

Park, the new face of ‘Dynamic Korea' a new promotional campaign to be shown around the world by the Korean government, has stated that his dream is to play in England and his new club's owner agrees. "A big fish should swim in big waters," he said, saying that the club will not stand in Park's way if a Premier League club moves in for him. There have been suggestions that Seoul bought the player, fighting off Suwon, Ulsan and Pohang, in the hope that the teenager with impress in this summer's World Youth Championship to be held in Holland, earning a big money move to England.

Whatever happens, the K-League has a new star and one only hopes that he can live up to the hype.

John Duerden

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