The Hangzhou Asian Games men’s soccer round of 16 draw has been completed, and the quarterfinals are a variable.
The Hangzhou Asian Games men’s soccer round of 16 draw has been completed. Korean soccer, which is challenging for its third consecutive gold medal, still needs four more wins. Daejin-woon, who was able to avoid strong championship candidates or burdensome teams such as Japan and North Korea until the finals, is not bad, but there are also predictions that the quarterfinals, which are considered the first hurdle, will be a variable.
The under-24 national soccer team led by coach Hwang Seon-hong passed the men’s group stage of the Hangzhou Asian Games, which ended on the 25th, in first place in Group E. Korea, which defeated Kuwait (9 to 0), Thailand (4 to 0), and Bahrain (3 to 0) in succession, succeeded in advancing to the round of 16 with the best score among the participating countries, ’16 goals and no conceding’.
The opponent in the round of 16 is Kyrgyzstan. Korea will play Kyrgyzstan at the Hangzhou Jinhua Sports Center Stadium at 8:30 pm on the 27th.
Kyrgyzstan secured a ticket to the round of 16 with a last-minute comeback. Kyrgyzstan was on the verge of elimination after losing two consecutive scoreless games to Indonesia and North Korea, but achieved a 4-1 comeback victory over Chinese Taipei in the final match, moving up to second place in Group F.
Hwang Seon-hong-ho won 1-0 against Kyrgyzstan in the second match of the 2024 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U23 Asian Cup Preliminary Group B held in Changwon, Gyeongsangnam-do on the 9th, about two weeks ago. . At that time, Korea won, but had to struggle until the end because no additional goals were scored.
▲ The final match of the 19th Hangzhou Asian Games men’s soccer group stage between Korea and Bahrain held at the Jinhua Sports Center Stadium in Zhejiang, China, on the 24th. Lee Kang-in is replaced in the first half and greets coach Hwang Sun-hong.
If they lose, they are immediately eliminated and have to fight with all their might,
but Hwang Seon-Hong-Ho then and now are a completely different team. With the addition of European Lee Kang-in to the wild card players, the team’s strength became even stronger. Lee Kang-in, who arrived in Hangzhou and joined the national team only on the 21st, started in the final group match against Bahrain on the 24th and played only about 35 minutes to lightly check his condition. The national team’s offensive line, which showed tremendous destructive power even without Lee Kang-in, is expected to show even better performance if Lee Kang-in improves his physical condition and blends into team play.토토사이트
Starting with the round of 16 against Kyrgyzstan, the tournament is now a one-off match where a loss means immediate elimination. Each team is expected to manage the game carefully and put forth an all-out effort. It will become more severe due to the checks on Korea, the strongest candidate for the championship and the defending champion. The opposing teams, who confirmed Korea’s formidable firepower in the group stage, are likely to play more defensively in the tournament.
Experts also predict that it will not be easy to defeat the opponent by scoring a large number of goals in the tournament like in the group stage. In fact, if you look at Korean soccer’s past Asian Games, there were many cases in which they ended up failing to attack weak teams that used close defense in the tournament and became victims of upsets.
Representatively, at the 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games, where coach Hwang Seon-hong played, Korea showed off its powerful offensive ability, scoring 16 goals in 4 games until the quarterfinals, but in the semifinals against Uzbekistan, the only effective shot allowed to the opponent was a goalkeeper error. I also have memories of conceding a goal and suffering a painful 0-1 defeat.
Fortunately, it is encouraging that the team showed some strategies for attacking dense defenses through the group stage. In the final match of the group stage, against Baray, Korea struggled to score 0-0 in the first half against Bahrain’s two-line defense against Ten Beck soccer, but in the second half alone, they scored three goals through various attack routes such as set pieces, aerial battles, counterattacks, and mid-range shots. succeded. Even in tournaments, how quickly the team scores the first goal is expected to be the key to winning the game.
If Korea defeats Kyrgyzstan, it will meet the winning team of Group A 1st place China and Group D 2nd place Qatar in the quarterfinals. As of now, it is assessed that there is a higher possibility that the home team, China, will advance.
China showed the second-best performance among the participating countries after Korea, with 2 wins, 1 draw, and a goal differential of +8 in the 3 group stage games. It is evaluated that the team’s strength has improved since it was handed over to coach Dejan Djordjevic, a foreign head coach from Serbia, last February. China is aiming to enter the medal range in this tournament held at home.
China, which has suffered from poverty in soccer for a long time, has a strong sense of keeping Korea in check. If the match between Korea and China takes place in the Asian Games, it may be a burden to have to deal with the enthusiastic cheering of tens of thousands of Chinese home fans against the host country. Above all, as was proven in a friendly match three months ago, China’s uniquely rough ‘Shaolin Soccer’ is a huge burden regardless of the power difference between the two teams. If there are any injuries, Korea may suffer a significant loss of power in the remaining games even if it beats China.
The Korea-Japan match with Japan, which is expected to compete with South Korea for the championship, or the inter-Korean match with North Korea can only be seen in the finals. Japan, ranked 1st in Group D, meets Myanmar in the round of 16, ranked 3rd in Group A. North Korea, ranked first in Group F, will face Bahrain, ranked second in Group E, where South Korea also belonged. The winners of the two matchups will face off in the quarterfinals.
Japan ranked first in Group D and advanced to the round of 16 to meet Myanmar, ranked third in Group A. North Korea, ranked first in Group F, will face Bahrain, ranked second in Group E. If Japan and North Korea pass the round of 16, they will meet in the quarterfinals. Iran, another powerhouse, will play Thailand, ranked 3rd in Group E, in the round of 16, and will play the winner of Hong Kong, ranked 2nd in Group C, and Palestine, ranked 2nd in Group D, in the quarterfinals. Uzbekistan, ranked 1st in Group C, will meet Indonesia, ranked 3rd in Group F, and Saudi Arabia, ranked 2nd in Group B, will meet India, ranked 2nd in Group A, with the winners facing off in the next round. Once the round of 16 schedule is completed, the quarterfinals will begin on October 1.
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