Jürgen Klinsmann is experimenting with an under-the-radar international squad, just as he did with the U.S. national team.
The South Korea men’s national soccer team, led by head coach Jürgen Klinsmann, held its first training session on Wednesday at Gudeok Sports Complex in Busan in preparation for the June A match. The team will play two June A matches against Peru at the Busan Asiad Stadium on June 16 at 8 p.m. and El Salvador at the Daejeon World Cup Stadium on June 20 at the same time.
Klinsmann’s team will be looking for its first win in the A-Match schedule. In March, the team drew 1-1 with Colombia and lost 1-2 to Uruguay.
While Klinsmann called up the same 메이저사이트 World Cup squad that played at the Qatar 2022 World Cup in March, he chose players he has observed firsthand for the June A matches.
The most prominent of these is Hong Hyun-seok, who was called up to the A team for the first time in his career. He has been called up to the U-17 and U-23 national teams, but never the A team.
Hong has plenty of experience at Gent in the Belgian Eredivisie, where he has been a regular midfielder this season. He has nine goals and 11 assists in 58 official matches and 4473 minutes in the 2022/23 season. In the league, he had his best season with five goals and six assists in 31 games and 2396 minutes.
Klinsmann also experimented by calling up Park Kyu-hyun, who had previously been called up to the Asian Games squad led by Hwang Sun-hong.
Park is a defender from Ulsan’s youth team Hyundai Go who has represented Korea at the U-17, U-20, and U-23 levels. He is a versatile player who can play center back and full back.
Park joined Werder Bremen (Germany) on loan in the summer of 2019 before making a permanent move to Bremen in the summer of 2021 to challenge for European honors.
In 2022/23, he spent the season on loan at Dynamo Dresden (German third division), making 16 appearances and gaining more playing time before earning a full transfer at the end of the season.
Klinsmann has begun to utilize a wide range of international options, calling up players like these two who have gone largely unnoticed. This is similar to his past choices for the U.S. national team.
Klinsmann, who typically favored overseas players over American MLS players, made a point of identifying non-mainstream overseas players, calling up Julian Green (Greuther Fürth) and Christian Pulisic (Chelsea), who was considered a promising prospect at the time.
This has continued since taking charge of the Korean national team. Both Hong Hyun-seok and Park Kyu-hyun will be looking to make their A-match debuts in their first call-ups.