Reporter Ban Jin-hyuk meets with head coach Jürgen Klinsmann and technical advisor Roberto Di Matteo of Jeonbuk Hyundai.
Jeonbuk Hyundai and Gangwon FC played the 30th round of the Hana OneQ K League 1 2023 at Jeonju World Cup Stadium at 2 p.m. on April 16.
The result was a shocker. Favorites Jeonbuk hung their heads in shame as they suffered a 1-3 upset loss to last-place Gangwon.
Aside from the result, Jeonju World Cup Stadium had a visitor. Jürgen Klinsmann, the head coach of the South Korean national team, had an intuition.
Klinsmann’s intuition led to a meeting with Jeonbuk’s technical advisor Roberto Di Matteo.
When Di Matteo heard that Klinsmann would be visiting Jeonju, he reportedly waited a long time to meet with the team’s technical advisor.
For about 30 minutes before kickoff, Klinsmann and Di Matteo shared their opinions on Jeonbuk’s available players for the national team.
In addition, they reportedly shared their views and opinions on the K League and Korean soccer in general.
It was Di Matteo’s first time meeting with a coach outside of Jeonbuk.
According to an official from the Korea Football Association, Klinsmann commented, “I think I understood the direction of the meeting, which is to meet with officials through connections at each club, rather than just checking the performance of the team through interviews with reporters on the field in England after taking over as head coach of the Korean national team.”
Klinsmann’s intuition for the K League came out of the blue. The original plan was for him to travel from England, where he played friendlies against Wales and Saudi Arabia, to Germany to watch Kim Min-jae’s team, Bayern Munich.
However, he suddenly changed his schedule to check on the K League players, perhaps in anticipation of bad publicity.
According to the Korea Football Association, Klinsmann returned to Korea on the afternoon of the 14th, and he plans to start by checking on the K League players before announcing the roster for the October A match.
There is a sense that Klinsmann’s return may have been in response to the cold public opinion.
Klinsmann has been compared to his predecessor, Paulo Bento, who is no longer a rival for the job in Japan and South Korea due to recent poor results and performances. 온라인카지노
Japan embarked on a European tour through the September A-match period and came away with two straight wins over Germany and Turkiye, the best performance in terms of content and results.
Bento recently took charge of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), beating Costa Rica 3-1 on his debut.
Klinsmann also stirred up controversy when he said in an interview back home on Thursday, “I’m here because you asked me to be here.”
“When you’re preparing for an important tournament, you have to have positive public opinion when you’re preparing. Even if the team is strong from within, criticism from the outside is bound to shake the team. It’s never too late to criticize when you don’t get the results you want at the Asian Cup.”