The South Korean women’s U-20 national soccer team has left for Colombia, where the 2024 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup will be held, dreaming of “re-enacting the semifinals” for the first time in 14 years.
The women’s U-20 national team, led by head coach Park Yoon-jung, left for Bogota, Colombia, where the tournament’s group stage will be held through Incheon International Airport on the morning of the 19th.
In Group D, Korea will compete with Nigeria (8 a.m. on September 2), Venezuela (10 a.m. on September 5), and Germany (5 a.m. on September 8) in Bogota to advance to the round of 16.
Twenty-one Taegeuk Warriors were selected in 2004 and 2005, while three high school students born in 2006 were also selected. Jang Seo-yoon, a defender from Yale University in the U.S., is the only one playing overseas.
Park Yoon-jung, a former national defender (11 A matches), is 35 years old and the youngest Korean head coach to participate in a FIFA event.
The Colombia World Cup is the first tournament in which the number of participating countries has increased from 16 (4 groups from 4 countries) to 24 (6 groups from 4 countries).
For this reason, in the existing tournament, the top two countries in each group went straight to the quarterfinals, but from this tournament, the top two countries in each group and the top four countries in the third place in each group will advance to the round of 16 to determine the winner through the tournament.
Korea’s best record at the U-20 Women’s World Cup was third place at the 2010 German Games.
At that time, Korea, where Ji So-yeon, Jeon Eun-ha, Lee Hyun-young, Lee Min-ah, Kim Hye-ri, and Moon So-ri played, won 2-1 (4-0 against Switzerland, 4-2 against Ghana, 0-1 against the U.S.) and defeated Mexico 3-1 in the quarterfinals before losing 1-5 to Germany in the semifinals to fail to advance to the final.
However, South Korea beat Colombia 1-0 in the third-place match to finish third, the highest ever.
At the time, Ji So-yeon scored eight goals in six games to finish second in scoring, and South Korea won the Fair Play Award.
South Korea continued its upward trend by advancing to the quarterfinals in succession at the 2012 Japanese and 2014 Canadian competitions.
However, South Korea, which suffered from elimination in the group stage at the 2016 Papua New Guinea competition, failed to advance to the finals at the 2018 French competition and entered a recession. 먹튀검증
While the 2020 tournament was canceled in the aftermath of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), South Korea was on the stage of the 2022 Costa Rica tournament, but it was disappointing to be eliminated from the group stage.
As a result, Park Yoon-ho, who is preparing for the Colombia World Cup, has continued to draw a big picture of “re-enactment of the semifinals” for the first time in 14 years.