Trail of the Lion King

This was the second of the three matches that I saw in a fifteen minute groundhopper frenzy. It took place at Icheon Practice Pitch B and featured a couple of schoolgirl teams, Da Hang Gge and Seol Bong. As with the game that I’d just left on the Practice Pitch A, it was part of the 8th Annual Icheon Tournament. Or at least I think it was, it would have been a bit odd though if fourteen year old girls were to take on a team of eighteen year old lads later in the tournament.

Icheon Practice Pitch B

The standard wasn’t up to much, with most of the players tending to chase after the ball rather than keeping to anything that resembled a formation. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves though and I suppose that’s what matters.

I’ve not seen very much women’s football over the years. In fact the only game I can remember seeing live was the German Cup Final in 2009. I was in Berlin to pay for a house that I’d bought on ebay after coming home pissed and discovered that the cup final was taking place at the Olympic Stadium that weekend. The men’s cup final that is. By holding up a cardboard sign, I managed to get a ticket from a fella that had a spare and once inside I discovered that they play the women’s final as a curtain-raiser to the main game.

The standard was decent, as you might have expected, although I thought that it was a shame that more people hadn’t got there early enough to give the match a bit more of an atmosphere.

Olympic Stadium, Berlin.

There wasn’t much of a crowd at the Icheon Practice Pitch B either, but a fair proportion of the ones who had turned up made some noise with the inflatable sticks that you see at the baseball games.

Perhaps they were in detention.

I paid even less attention to this game than I had to the one next door and so couldn’t tell you which team was which or even what the score was. Don’t suppose it matters really.

This post is pretty much for the hardcore groundhoppers. Or, I suppose, anyone who googles Jeil High School. Or maybe even Zen.

I’d arrived at Icheon’s stadium for their game against Busan Transportation when I heard shouts and a referee’s whistle coming from a nearby pitch. A closer inspection revealed games were taking place on both Icheon Practice Pitches. Now if that’s not groundhopper heaven I don’t know what is.

Icheon Practice Pitch A

First up on Icheon Practice Pitch A was a game between Jeil High School and Zen. One team was in red, the other blue. I couldn’t tell you which was which though. What I did find out was that the match was part of the 8th Annual Icheon Tournament, if that’s any use.

There was a sizeable crowd, maybe a hundred or so, most of whom were sat in the stand that ran a fair way along one side. Quite a few of them were in their football togs so I imagine that those fellas were playing later in the day.

About as many fans as at a Seongnam match.

I watched for a few minutes from behind the goal and because there was nobody to tell me not to, took a few photos with my camera poked through the netting. I rarely get to do that at other games.

From inside the goal.

Nothing more to tell you really, except that it was nil-nil when I arrived and still nil-nil when I left a few minutes later. Shortest post ever I suspect.

The second round of the FA Cup is the stage where the teams from the third tier National league come in to the competition. I hadn’t yet seen Gangneung play a home game so their tie against Honam University seemed an ideal opportunity to put that right.

The evening kick-off meant that Jen and I had been able to fit in a hike in the nearby Odaesan National Park before catching a bus from Jinbu to Gangneung. There are plenty of motels around the bus terminal and we were sorted with a place to stay by tea-time.

I pointed out the restaurant where I’d been served what I’d thought was raw liver soup last time I’d been here only to be told that it’s a place that specialises in blood clot soup. Wonderful. Somewhere to avoid later on then.

At six o’clock I took a taxi to the ground, it’s only a couple of miles away from the bus terminal and the fare wasn’t much above the minimum. There’s not a lot going on around the stadium that Gangneung share with K-League Gangwon and it actually took me longer to find somewhere to buy some beer than it had to get there.

Home of both Gangwon and Gangneung.

I took a seat right on the half-way line, behind a girl’s middle-school football team. How could I be so precise? Well, they’d parked their bus outside. I’ve never been to a school that had anything more than a mini-bus between the whole school, certainly not a coach dedicated to just one of their sports teams.

They don’t know they’re born.

In addition to the school kids, we had about another three hundred people or so dotted around the stadium. There were fifteen home ultras with a drum behind the goal and judging by the cheering whenever the students went on the attack, a fair few parents in the seats around me.

The Gangneung hardcore.

Gangneung were dressed up as Chelsea, whilst Honam were wearing a red and white Adidas kit reminiscent of the one that the Boro wore around 1983. No surprises as to which team I’d be cheering on in this game then.

The home side had the best of the opening twenty minutes, although Honam had a couple of chances on the break. It was noticeable just how much better the National League side were at ‘earning’ free-kicks. The slightest contact would result in the victim going to ground and the referee blowing for the foul. One of the Honam players tried to get in on the diving  but was lucky to escape a yellow for his ‘Best Man Dead’ effort.

Gangneung’s superiority paid off ten minutes before half-time when a high cross into the box was headed back across the goal, dropping over the line just inside the far post. It didn’t take Honam long to equalise though, the chance coming from a ball played through to their right-winger on the edge of the area. He had enough time to take a touch, glance across at the linesman to make sure he was onside and then sidefoot it home in the way that Bernie Slaven did so often. There wasn’t a Holgate fence for him to climb on, but he looked happy enough with his goal.

The posh seats.

At half-time we had a few fireworks going off outside the stadium. Perhaps they’d only just got the news about Thatcher.

Gangneung continued to dominate after the break, although both sides were playing good, fast passing football and creating chances. The home side hit the bar from a direct free-kick, whilst the visitors almost scored on the hour with a shot that just drifted past the post.

Nothing to see here.

As we approached the end of normal time Honam seemed quite happy to take the draw, perhaps with one eye on eventual penalties. They managed to hang on until the final whistle and take the tie into extra-time. I was out of beer at this point and so called it a night, heading back into town to meet Jen for something to eat at anywhere that didn’t specialise in blood clot soup.

A quick check the following day revealed that Gangneung had got a second goal to give them the victory and take them into the third round.

Gimpo is one of the new clubs in this season’s fourth tier Challengers League and last Saturday I thought I’d go along and watch them take on the previous year’s champions, Pocheon. The Gimpo City Stadium didn’t seem to be the easiest place to get to as I couldn’t find a subway station anywhere near the ground, however I had been told that there’s a bus that runs from Gangnam to Gimpo City Hall, which is close enough. I don’t often take the local buses due to the increased likelihood of my ballsing things up but on this occasion it worked fine.

For reference, and assuming you are starting from somewhere near where I live, you come out of Gangnam Station Exit Four, walk on for about fifty yards and then catch the 9501 bus. It takes about an hour to get to Gimpo and you get off at the City Hall stop. Don’t worry, it’s announced in English.

If you cross over the footbridge and then walk back along the other side of the road for about two hundred yards before turning right, the stadium is about a hundred yards further on. I walked all the way around the stadium before I found the way in, but then I like to do that even when I already know where the entrance is.

Gimpo Civil Stadium.

The stadium looks a bit run down, but I was impressed by the various paintings on the outside. At the gate there were a few old biddies fussing around, welcoming people in and making sure they had coffee and a programme. I made my way up to the main stand which I’d estimate held about a thousand. It was partially covered with the roof providing shelter for maybe two hundred people. As it was pissing down, this was the ideal place to sit and in a  handy coincidence the crowd was just the right size to allow anyone who was happy to squeeze in to keep dry.

Gimpo were in an Arsenal strip whilst Pocheon had some sort of blue effort with an orange trim. It reminded me of the type of colour scheme that you’d see on a deodorant can with sales targeted at fourteen year old boys.

I’d only just sat down when a glancing header from Hong Jee In put the visitors in front. There was a brief outburst of cheering from some people behind me that suggested  that there were some Pocheon fans sheltering from the rain too, probably his Mam and Dad.

Pocheon held the lead for twenty minutes or so until a poor headed backpass put Hwang In Seong clear through on goal. His shot beat the keeper but came back off the post, Gimpo teammate Lee Seung Hyun was following up and he bundled the ball home for the equaliser. That sparked a bigger celebration.

Hwang in Seong was at the heart of most of the Gimpo attacks and should really have put his team in front, poking the ball against the outside of the post and then heading over from the six yard line. Pocheon are a decent team though and they regained the lead just before the break when a mazy run into the box from Seo Dong Hyun took him past two defenders before he pulled the ball back for Ahn Seong Nam to tap in.

Pocheon on the attack.

At half-time I sacrified my seat in the dry and nipped out to Maccy D’s across the road. I then watched the second half through a gate on the other side of the stadium that had overhead cover. Gimpo were making a game of it and could have equalised again when Kim Seong Jin hit the post with a looping shot from thirty yards.

There were four Pocheon fans on that other side of the ground who had declined a seat under cover. They kept up a steady stream of encouragement in circumstances where I doubt I’d have bothered.

The Pocheon hardcore.

The away fans were rewarded twenty minutes from time when Kang Seok Gu curled a free kick into the box, nobody got a touch and it bounced past the unlucky Gimpo keeper. I felt sorry for the fella as he’d had a solid game. He made amends with two saves in quick succession afterwards but they merely served to keep the score down, Pocheon finishing up three-one winners.

The victory maintained Pocheon’s unbeaten record and consolidated their position at the top of the table. Gimpo, with two wins and two losses so far, remained in fifth place.

Anyang Cheetahs were a big deal in the K-League a few years back, they even won it in 2000. It all went wrong though at the end of the 2003 season when their owners, under pressure from the KFA, agreed to relocate from Anyang to Seoul, rename the club FC Seoul and play their home games at the Sangam World Cup Stadium.

That was all well and good for the people of Seoul who took up with the shiny new team, but it left the Anyang fans with an empty stadium and plenty of time to go shopping on a Saturday afternoon.

The advent of the new K-League second division, or K-League Challenge as it is oddly known, provided the opportunity for the city authorities to get a team up and running again and that’s what they did. After nine years of weeds on the terraces, Anyang had its team back.

Anyang Stadium

Anyang’s opening fixture was against Goyang Hi, another team with a back story. Last season they had been turning out as Ansan H, the H being a shortened version of their previous name Ansan Hallelujah. I’d been to see them a couple of times, once at their 35,000 seater stadium, the other time at the much more appropriately sized practice pitch next door.

Ansan had decided that they no longer wished to have a football team and H were forced to move on, pretty much in the same way as when they were booted out of Iksan a few years previously. I can only presume that they must leave the changies in a bit of a state.

Whatever, this was one game that I really fancied and so I caught the bus from Yeonggwang , where Jen and I had stayed after the game the previous day. I couldn’t believe that there were direct buses between the two places, Yeonggwang Bus Station only runs buses to about half a dozen destinations so quite why someone selected Anyang as one of them is beyond me.

I took a taxi from Anyang Bus Station to the ground. The driver had no idea that there was a football stadium in Anyang, but he knew of the ice hockey rink next door so I was able to convince him to take me there instead. After stocking up on beer and buying a ten thousand won ticket, I took up a place behind the goal with the home fans. If there was going to be a place to party then that was it. As kick-off neared it got busier, culminating in a procession of Anyang fans making their way from a makeshift bar that they had set up outside the stadium.

They had waited nine years for this.

There had been rumours that the seventeen thousand capacity stadium would sell out and it may well have done, but apparently the majority of tickets had been bought by sponsors who then must have just thrown them in the bin. The official attendance was three thousand four hundred or so and I’d say that was about right.

For the Anyang fans who had been waiting for this day for nine years though the attendance didn’t matter as they greeted the arrival of the teams with a mass hurling of bog rolls. That’s a football tradition that you don’t see so much these days, but one I’m always happy to participate in, particularly for the opportunity it gives you to bounce an unfurled roll off an unsuspecting head.

The teams take to the field.

I’d arranged to meet up with a few lads I know from the football over here, some were Anyang fans, some were groundhoppers, some were fella’s who just like a bit of a party. Some were all three. The upshot of that was that I didn’t take a lot of notice of the action on the field. It wasn’t really about the game anyway, just about enjoying Anyang getting their club back.

I took the odd photo though.

I was just about sober enough to be able to remember the first goal. It was from Anyang and a couple of minutes into the game. It was greeted with similar celebrations to those we’d just gone through as the teams ran out.

More action from the game.

Goyang managed an equaliser not long before the end. I didn’t realise this however until the next day when I stumbled across the scoreline somewhere. Or if I had known, I’d forgotten it. All in all, it was a very good day.

Yeonggwang is a one-horse town on the south-west coast of Korea, famous in certain circles for being the place to get yellow croaker fish. Normally that wouldn’t be enough to make it worth a visit but when they’ve got a fourth division football team as well then it becomes a much more appealing prospect.

The easiest way to get to Yeonggwang from Seoul is to take a bus from Central City and so that’s exactly what we did. It takes around three hours and forty minutes, with a stop halfway at a service station. The toilets were so busy that I saw an old bloke remove a bag that was covering an out-of–order urinal so that he could slash in it. As his piss flowed on to the floor, a queue formed behind him.

Once at Yeonggwang Jen and I thought we’d have the famed croaker for lunch. They call it Gulbi in Korea and it seemed to be all over town, or at least the dried take-away fish were.  Yet, whilst nobody would have to entertain the notion of going home without the obligatory Gulbi gift box set, there didn’t seem to be many restaurants actually serving it to eat.

Dried Gulbi attracting flies.

After wandering past a market that could easily have been created by the tourist board to show what people looked like a hundred years ago, we eventually found a place that offered Gulbi stew. It was just like seafood stew but with the decent stuff replaced by a couple of croakers, complete with their guts. Marvellous. I removed as much of the innards as my chopstick skills allowed before realising that once gutted there’s not much more left than the sort of skeleton you’d see on an episode of Top Cat.

So, there’s your restaurant review, or at least it would be if I’d told you where we’d eaten. Time for the game. Chunnam Yeonggwang were taking on Cheongju Jikji in what would have been a third tier game last season but due to the new second division of the K-League was now effectively a fourth division tie. We could have walked to the ground, having seen it on the way into town but with it being uphill we took a five-minute cab ride.

The stadium.

There were a few artificial pitches outside of the stadium which looked to be a handy asset for the local community, particularly those who were using them to take their dog for a shite. The main stadium was quite impressive. It had a curvy stand along one side with a grassy embankment along the other three, designed, perhaps, with the dog walkers in mind.

Yeonggwang were in red and yellow stripes with what I think is called a yoke over their shoulders. In blue. If that wasn’t bad enough, their sleeves were solid red and the shirt was complemented with black shorts and white socks. It was as if someone had decided that a colouring competition for five-year olds was the most appropriate way of designing the strip. Cheongju were in a much simpler blue and navy effort. Both sides struggled with the wind but did their best to keep the ball on the ground and build from the back.

The main curvy stand.

Twenty four minutes in the visitors took the lead when the ball was pulled back across the goal to allow Cheongju captain Kim Hyung Somethingorother to sidefoot the ball home from ten yards out. That was it for the first half.

At the break we were entertained with volleyball on the big screen behind the goal. My club Middlesbrough are thinking about installing a big screen at our ground this summer and it’s hard to imagine that after all those years in the Premiership we don’t already have something that fourth division teams in Korea tend to have as a matter of course. I doubt we’ll get half-time televised sport on the screen at the Boro though, it will be all adverts from people wanting to buy your Granny’s gold earrings or offering you a payday loan.

The curvy main stand again.

Cheongju had plenty of opportunities in the second half to increase their lead, the best chance coming with a quarter of an hour remaining. One of their strikers was put clear through after the home defence got confused by someone else moving out from an offside but not active position. The lad with the chance somehow managed to pull his shot wide from five yards out.

Random action photo.

The miss didn’t matter though as a couple of minutes later Cheongju doubled their lead. One of the home centre-halves tried to cut out a ball played into the box but only succeeded in blasting it into his own net from a fair distance out. It would have been a great finish at the other end as I doubt the keeper even saw the ball flash by him.

That was it, two-nil to the visitors. We walked back into town and found a hotel. You’ve got to be somewhere and if it’s just for one night then that place might as well be Yeonggwang.

I’d missed the opening weekend of the domestic season in Korea, a last minute trip to Oman stopping me from taking in a fourth division game in Gyeongju and Jeonbuk’s trip to Daejeon. That’s life I suppose. Fortunately I didn’t need to stay in Muscat for a second weekend and that left me free to get to a couple of Korean FA Cup First Round games.

The format of the competition seems to change every year. This season we have a total of sixty four teams taking part, with the First Round consisting of twelve of the eighteen fourth division sides and twenty of the universities. It seemed a little mean to deny the six crappiest Challengers League teams a crack at the cup, although in reality the university sides tend to be of a higher standard than the fourth tier and it may have been that the Korean FA were anxious to avoid the sort of scorelines that would suggest that the teams had played rugby rather than football.

Jen and I caught the KTX to Dongdaegu and then took the subway to Yeungnam University. It’s the final stop on one of the two Daegu lines, the green one I think, and it takes around half an hour to get there. Conveniently the subway station is called Yeungnam University and there’s a pitch shown on the map inside the station, close to exit four.

Sure enough, the pitch was just where the map suggested. What the map didn’t show was that there was more sand than grass and there were no lines marked. It looked a long time since anyone would have played at that venue, or at least anyone who would worry about having a foot disappear down a pothole.

The old grass pitch.

It was a shame really as the old ground had a certain charm to it. The minimal rows of seating would have been more than enough and the ‘main stand’ reminded me of a cricket pavilion. Jen spoke to a fella who looked like he might know what was going on and he directed us around the corner to the artificial pitch ten minutes walk away.

There weren’t any permanent seats alongside the artificial pitch, just a large pile of folding chairs. That was sufficient though for the thirty or so spectators, most of whom were probably there to watch their offspring play.

Those tents were for the players and officials, rather than spectators.

Yeungnam were dressed up as Brighton, whilst Kwangwoon sported a Burnleyesque claret and blue effort. The conditions weren’t ideal as we started with a strong wind blowing towards the Yeungnam goal. Kwangwoon had the better of the opening exchanges but both teams were keeping the ball on the ground and passing it well.

The visitors had the best chance of the half, hitting the post five minutes before the break.

Yeungnam in blue, Kwangwoon in maroon.

Yeungnam picked up a bit after the interval although perhaps this was due to it being their turn to have the wind behind them. Whenever there was a lull in play I could occupy myself watching the old fellas walking around the track or the young girl being taught by her grandad to ride a bike. We had a bloke on a scooter doing a couple of laps as if he were Barry Sheene and then equally memorably someone galloping a circuit on a horse.

As the clock ticked down to full-time I started to worry a little about running out of beer. I’d paced myself perfectly for ninety minutes but the prospect of extra time and penalties was something that I hadn’t allowed for.

That’s about a quarter of the crowd.

There were less than ten minutes and half a can remaining when Kwangwoon made the breakthrough. Their right back made a perfectly timed overlapping run that took him past the opposing full back and left him clean through on the advancing keeper. He beat the goalie to the ball and clipped it past him to open the scoring.

Yeungnam understandably showed a touch more urgency in the closing minutes but couldn’t take their chances. Kwangwoon made it safe with the last kick of the game, one of their strikers controlling the ball eight yards out and turning well before stroking the ball home.

The next round sees the slightly bigger guns of the third tier National League and the new second tier K-League join the competition. So, I imagine that’ll be more chairs and fewer horses. Probably.

It’s the new season and about bloody time too. Whilst basketball is all well and good, it’s not football. Not even close.

And in case you were wondering why you haven’t heard of Jiangsu Sainty, it’s because they are from China. This was a Champions League fixture as the Korean domestic leagues don’t kick off until the weekend. Still, it’s a football match and so I went along.

I heard the hum of the vuvuzelas as I emerged from the subway station. There’s only really Seoul where that nonsense still goes on these days. In Korea anyway. I imagine the South Africans won’t have consigned theirs to the skip yet. I wondered if the noise was actually a recording as it seemed suspiciously loud for a game with what I suspected was going to be a pretty low attendance.

I bought a twelve thousand won ticket for the East stand. I usually go behind the goal with whatever away fans are visiting, but on this occasion I fancied observing the Chinese supporters from somewhere that gave me a decent look at them.

There were about three hundred of them and initially they made as much noise as the thousand Seoul fans in the opposite end. Both sets of fans waved massive flags but in a nice touch a lot of the Chinese fellas were also waving red flags that looked to be the perfect size to stick in the top of a sandcastle.

“Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer…”

Seoul had all of last season’s foreign players back for another year although I didn’t recognise Escudero at first as he’s spent the winter growing some hair. It wasn’t long before they made an impact and ten minutes in Escudero rolled the ball into the path of Dejan Damjanovic who stroked it home from fifteen yards out.

Sainty had a couple of big defenders who looked as if they had spent their off-season eating pies rather than growing their hair. They were dangerous at set pieces, particularly if they collided with anyone, but not particularly mobile when asked to defend. With half an hour gone a neat passing move from Seoul was too much for the statuesque centre halves and Yun Il Lock finished well to put the hosts two up.

Gratuitous admittedly, but so wrong at football.

At half time I moved to the North West corner, partly because I could but mainly so that I could get an idea of how many people were in the East stand. Not many is the answer. The official attendance was announced as 6,321 and whilst I didn’t actually count the people there, the crowd was small enough for me to be confident in my estimate of there actually being around four thousand fans inside the stadium.

Seoul have taken the decision for this season to close the upper tier in all but the West stand. I’m not sure why they’ve left that one open as there’s usually only around fifty people who choose to sit there. The blocking off of the areas will probably reduce the capacity to around forty thousand I’d imagine and even for the games against Suwon that will be more than enough these days.

The view from the north-west corner.

Ten minutes into the second half Molina flicked the ball on to find Yun Il Lock in space and the kid notched his second of the game. It didn’t take long for Dejan to get his second as well as another smart passing move on the hour ended with him taking the score to four-nil.

Sainty pulled a goal back ten minutes from time when the Seoul defence failed to cut out a ball played across the box. It gave the away fans something to sing about but it didn’t mean much.

This was from the first half.

I nipped away a few minutes from time, not so much to avoid the traffic as there was none, but more because the temperature had dropped quite significantly. As I approached the subway I heard the sound of a fifth goal for Seoul being celebrated. A quick check the next day revealed Molina had tucked it away, a fair reward for his performance I thought.

Five – one was how it finished, the win taking Seoul to the top of their group.