FRANCE 98 – Team Detail

For their fourth consecutive appearance in the World Cup finals, South Korea has two targets. Get through to the second round, despite being drawn in the same Group as Holland, Belgium and Mexico, and prove they will be a force to be reckoned with when they co-host 2002 with Japan.

There is no official record of when football was first played but experts believe British marines brought the sport to the Korean peninsula around 1880. There are no traces of the game until Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910. The first known soccer team was formed in 1920. College sides followed and inter-city matches were staged, which along with games against Japanese sides, became increasingly popular. The South Korean Football Association was established in 1928 but disbanded by Japanese colonial rulers in 1938 (South Korean players were allowed into the Japanese national squad from 1936). After the liberation in 1945, the association was restarted and joined FIFA in 1948 and the Asian Football Confederation in 1954.

South Korea is proud to have had more appearances at the World Cup finals than any other Asian nation. France ’98 will be their fifth since 1954. But the have not had an easy time on the international stage. They have never got past the first round at any finals. In Switzerland in 1954, they were beaten 9-0 by a Ferenc Puskas-led Hungary and then 7-0 by Turkey. They managed a 1-1 draw with Bulgaria at Mexico in 1986 but at Italia ’90 lost all three games. Their USA ’94 saw a heroic performance when they were drawing 2-2 with Germany but eventually went down 3-2. They drew 2-2 with Spain and 0-0 with Bolivia.

The aim in France is to beat North Korea’s record in being the only Asian side to reach the World Cup quarter-finals (in England in 1966).