Trail of the Lion King

Going to the match, any match, is quite difficult in Korea at the moment.  The rainy season is scuppering the baseball and in what seems to me to be really inconsiderate timing the second and third division football teams are on their holidays. Despite starting and finishing their seasons at roughly the same time as the K-League, the teams in the National and Challengers leagues knock off to the beach for six and eight weeks respectively in the summer.

So what does that leave? Not much really. I think if the weather had been better then I’d probably have looked to get up a mountain somewhere. Ice hockey would be the perfect solution. An arena with the air conditioning set cold enough to stop ice from melting? That sounds just about perfect. But, no, it’s a winter sport so I’ll have to wait until the weather is just as cold outside as inside and it doesn’t seem anything like as attractive in those circumstances.

Sometimes though, something crops up that makes a particular game irresistible, and that was the case with the Sangju Sangmu’s visit to Seoul.

South Korean football is going through a crisis at the moment with around a hundred top-flight players under investigation for match-fixing or gambling on their own games. So far, forty odd have been indicted, with ten being banned for life and one getting ten months in chokey. More players are being lifted each day, with most clubs being affected either through having taken part in a fixed game or by having subsequently signed a player who did.

However, even amongst misery you can usually find a positive and this week it came from Sangju Sangmu. The military team is one of those teams most involved, with fifteen of its players either under investigation or already banned. Three of those players ruled out are goalkeepers, leaving them with just last season’s Jeonbuk keeper Kwon Soon Tae.

Now, when you are the only remaining goalie on the books, you’d be careful wouldn’t you? You’d keep your fingers away from the bacon slicer or dogs with large teeth. You’d probably try not to strain your back whilst reaching for the remote control for your telly as David James once managed to do, or to sever a tendon in your foot by dropping a jar of salad cream on it in the way that another former England goalie, Dave Beasant, once did.

Salad Cream - Banned from Kwon's fridge

Kwon Soon Tae was able to keep himself out of his local Accident and Emergency department, but he just couldn’t resist picking up two yellow cards and an early bath in the game against Daejeon. This meant that not only did an outfield player have to take over in goal for the remainder of that game, but Kwon’s one match suspension would ensure that an outfield player had to start between the sticks in the following game away to Seoul. That’s some silver lining to the match-fixing scandal.

I love it when an outfield player has to go in goal. Really love it, as Wor Kev might say. And so there was no way I was going to be anywhere else on Saturday evening than the World Cup stadium to see some hapless bloke with his gloves on the wrong hands getting smacked in the chops with a football.

"I'd love it if Lee Yoon Eui had to dress up as a goalie and flap his arms around, just love it."

Just in case an outfield player in goal wasn’t enough excitement for one day, Jen and I decided to walk to the stadium from our apartment in Yeoksam. It’s fourteen kilometres as the crow flies apparently. Not that the way a crow would get there is particularly relevant as we decided to make it a bit more interesting by setting off in the opposite direction and walking to the Olympic Stadium first before joining the Han river. It took the distance up to something around twenty kilometres. Or at least it would have done if the river hadn’t been swollen by the recent rain. Whole sections of path were under water and we frequently had to detour through apartment complexes, over bridges or under roads.

This fella was determined to exercise his dog.

More than once we encountered a dead-end and had to retrace our steps before realising that a twenty minute trek had moved us no more than a hundred yards further along the path. At half past six we came up against one blockage too many and after five hours of walking called it a day. We still had six kilometres to do, but didn’t want to risk missing a single moment of comedy goalkeeping.

We'd had enough by this time.

It was as difficult to get into the stadium as it had been to walk to it. We wanted to sit in the away fans section behind the goal, but the woman in the ticket office told us that it was sold out. As if. I’d have been more likely to have believed her if she had tried to claim that her dog had eaten all of the tickets. There are around twelve thousand seats behind that goal, probably enough for the entire town of Sangju to attend the game if they fancied it. Eventually she stopped her nonsense and sold us two tickets. As expected there were no more than a hundred away fans in total.

Lee Yoon Eui was the unlucky outfield player who was going to play in goal. To make it even more interesting he was making his league debut. His only previous professional appearance had been a twenty five minute run-out as a substitute in a League Cup game against Busan earlier this season. Still, it’s better than digging foxholes or firing at innocent passenger planes that you have mistaken for North Korean fighter jets.

Look out, it's a North Korean fighter plane.

In the pre-match warm-up, Lee didn’t look as if he had ever seen a football before. The goalie coach threw a few easy balls for him to catch, but the concept of jumping in the air and collecting the ball at the highest point possible was something that Lee looked to be struggling with. They moved on to a bit of shooting practice and perhaps not understanding what he was meant to do, the debutant keeper successfully avoided almost every shot that came in his direction. Maybe it was his military training kicking in. By the time the teams had completed the warm-up I was fully expecting a ten goal or more victory for Seoul.

Prior to kick off, the players stood in line whilst the captains each made a short speech, the gist of it being, I think, that they would only bet on the horses from now on and that they wouldn’t take much in the way of bribes until the fuss had died down a bit.

Once the game kicked off, I’d been expecting Seoul to be shooting on sight. They didn’t though and it was ten minutes before Lee had to make a save. Even then, it was a fairly tame effort straight at him. We had more of the same for the first half hour with the Seoul players obviously not realising that all they had to do was to place the ball a yard wide of the keeper. Maybe they had taken advantage of the generous odds and backed a nil-nil draw.

Lee grew in confidence and started coming for and collecting crosses in a way that he didn’t look capable of doing in the warm-up. His kicking was good too, as you would expect, and for a while it was as if the game was being played with two proper keepers.

Half an hour in, veteran Seoul defender Edilson gave away a penalty and Sangju had the chance to take the lead. Kim Jung Woo took the spot kick and put the visitors a goal up with the sort of casual chip that would have resulted in him doing guard duty all week had it been saved.

0-1

Sangju saw out the rest of the half with some decent defending and a little luck as they survived a goalmouth scramble or two. I couldn’t believe how reluctant Seoul had been to pepper the Sangju goal with shots. The second half began with a bit of excitement as Lee gave away a free-kick by picking up a backpass. Again Seoul seemed to think that they were facing Gordon Banks and failed to grasp that just hitting the target would probably have been enough.

Ten minutes into the half, Seoul finally made the breakthrough. Lee Yoon Eui got caught in no man’s land, something which as a soldier you would think he would be trained to avoid. Dejan Damjanovic was able to slide the ball past him and off the post into the net. Maybe the goal gave the Montenegrin a bit of confidence as ten minutes later he scored his second of the evening. This time it was with a shot from the edge of the box that Lee dived over in the manner of someone trying to make as big a splash as possible by bellyflopping into a swimming pool.

As there were still twenty five minutes remaining I fully expected a few more goals. Lee had been found out and all Seoul had to do was hit shots that required him to dive. They didn’t though and seemed content to sit back on their lead. Ten minutes from the end their complacency backfired as Kim Min Soo curled a direct free kick over the Seoul wall to level the scores.

2-2

That’s the way it should have stayed too. However, the ref added five minutes of injury time and with seconds to go Bang Seung Hwan got the winner for the Seoul after heading home a corner from a couple of yards out. It was the sort of cross that a proper keeper would have just plucked out of the air. Unfortunately Sangju didn’t have a proper keeper and it cost them the point, possibly all three if you considered the earlier errors.

In the circumstances, Sangju and their fans didn’t seem too down-hearted. It was a game that they expected nothing from and that’s exactly what they got. I’d been hoping for some comedy goalkeeping and in the end I got what I’d been expecting too. Providing he can keep a tight grip on the salad cream, Kwon Soon Tae will be back between the posts in the next game for the military team and Lee Yoon Eui can go back to spending his Saturday afternoons weeding the parade ground.

The main reason that I write this blog is so that I don’t forget stuff that I’ve done. Or rather, so that when I have forgotten stuff that I’ve done, I can read back through the posts and refresh my memory. I find that I’ve generally got about a week to get the write-up done before I start to forget all but the most basic details though. After a fortnight I can usually recall that I’ve been to a particular city and watched a football game, whilst after three weeks I usually remember very little more than the fact that I’ve got an outstanding blog post to do. Outstanding that is in terms of it not being done, rather than as a gauge of its potential quality.

So, a month ago Jen and I went to Busan again. It’s taken me this long to write about it mainly because I had some time back in England between now and then and I got sidetracked by my other life, the one that involves kids, parents, a bit of hiking and wild camping in The Lakes and almost as much hiking but with not quite so wild camping at Glastonbury.

I saw this fella at 6am near Angle Tarn.

As excuses go for not updating the blog it’s better than ‘the dog ate my homework’, although not as good as ‘I idled away my time in the UK photographing my daughter’s pug dressed up as a bee’.

He loves it really.

I’m back in Korea now though and a rainy Sunday afternoon seems the perfect time to try to remember what went on at the last match. Here goes. We got the train to Busan on the Friday evening, that bit’s easy. I suspect we probably shared a couple of bottles of screw-top red wine too.

We got knocked back from the first hotel we tried, just outside the station, as although they had rooms, they didn’t have one for all three nights of the bank holiday weekend. Fortunately we got fixed up around the corner in a scruffy looking hotel that had probably got its prices right at thirty thousand won a night.

Oddly, it's not mentioned in the guide books.

Rather than rattle on about the entire weekend, I’ll just give you what I’ll describe as highlights but in reality are actually the bits that I’ve remembered. I’ll finish off with the football game, so just scroll down to the bottom of the page if you’ve been desperately waiting for over a month to find out the score.

Jen had some sort of teaching conference thing going on, I’m not sure if she was attending, presenting or both. I do listen when she tells me stuff, but retaining the information for a month was always going to be unlikely. Anyway, all it meant was that I had a bit of time to kill. The first day I occupied myself by watching a succession of schoolkids games in a tournament at the university where whatever it was she was doing was going on. That was ok, particularly as I was working my way through a few bottles of New Zealand beer.

A pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

The next day I met up with fellow Boro fan Alan and his wife Se Young. They had the great idea of visiting the Memorial for the War Dead in Jungang Park. It’s quite a trek up to the monument but we went most of the way by bus which in the heat is probably the best way of doing it.

Memorial for the War Dead

After that they took me to a Uzbekistani restaurant where we overdosed on lamb dishes and worked our way through a variety of different strength Russian beers. It was so good that Jen and I went there later that evening after she‘d finished the teacher stuff and then we returned once more the following evening before we caught our train back to Seoul.

The lamb was ok too.

On the bank holiday Monday, Memorial Day, we had a bit of a wander around Amnan Park and then along a coastal footpath to Songdo Beach. Busan’s beaches tend to be very popular, particularly the ones further East, Gwangalli Beach and Haeundae Beach. Songdo was much quieter though and a lot better for it I thought. There were plenty of areas to fish and next time I’m in Busan I’d like to have a go.

Jen and I enjoying a picnic lunch.

So, the match. Or rather some of the match As you may have noticed it wasn’t actually in Busan, but about half an hour’s drive away in neighbouring Changwon. Alan had very kindly offered to drive us all there and had I followed his directions on where to meet we would have seen it all. Unfortunately I went to the wrong subway station and we didn’t get to the Changwon Football Centre until about ten minutes before half time.

Changwon break towards the Busan end.

We made our way around to the away supporters section as I know a few of the lads who were sat there and I  worked my way through a few more of the New Zealand beers. I can‘t actually remember if anything of note happened in the remainder of the first half, but it was scoreless at the interval. It’s strange how some things do stick in your mind though and the frogs in the toilets is one of those things. I’ve no idea how or why, but that’s like lots of things in life. Obviously I took a photo.

Deer, pugs and frogs. What more could you want in a football blog?

The second half started badly for Busan with Changwon winning a penalty a few minutes after the restart. I’m not sure if it was deserved or not as I was concentrating more on the beer and the frogs, but Song Geun Soo tucked it away to put Changwon a goal up.

One - Nil.

And in truth, I can’t remember much more about the second half action. We sang a bit and gave the Changwon goalie plenty of stick but I don‘t think Busan came too close to scoring. Or maybe they did. Changwon didn’t get any more though and so the penalty was the difference between the teams at full time.

For this weekend’s trip Jen and I caught the Friday night KTX to Gwangju. It took us two hours and forty minutes to get there which coincidentally turned out to be just the right amount of time needed for us to work our way through a couple of bottles of screw-top Australian red. I’d like to think that someone took that into consideration when building the rail network.

We stayed in a motel next to the Gwangju Songjeong Station. It was only 30,000 won, which might explain why the decoration in the room consisted of a Titanic poster (sadly from the film and not the actual launching of the ship) and a Hite calendar featuring half nudey girls.

It wasn't far to walk though.

Next day we had a bit of time to spare before the third division game between Gwangju Gwangsan and Jeonju EM. Gwangju is a city that seems to be at the heart of any protest going and the Jeil High School had an exhibition showing how its students had stood up to the occupying Japanese on a fairly regular basis in the run up to World War II. It was quite a strange collection of stuff with photos of kids getting their heads cracked with sticks sitting alongside pictures of each year’s football or martial arts team. One corner, which seemed particularly out of place, was dedicated to basketball and baseball trophies. Nevertheless it was an interesting way to pass an hour or so.

This was outside.

After lunch we had a walk along the river, where the shops seemed to come in batches. There would be a whole street knocking out wedding dresses, followed by a hundred yards of tool hire shops. I think I liked the street of pet shops best, with some quite odd looking dogs in their windows.

It's just as well the warmer weather has arrived.

The opportunity to tap on the glass and attract the attention of the puppies occupied me for longer than it really should have and by the time we got a taxi to Honam University for the football we were cutting it a little fine. The game had already kicked off as we arrived, with Gwangju in an all blue strip that looked like it had faded in the sun. Jeonju EM wore their white away kit.

Gwangju in blue, Jeonju in white.

It was a pleasant place to watch a game in the sunshine. We took up a position along the side opposite the dug-outs. It was raised about eight feet so there was a decent view of the artificial pitch. A minute or two after we arrived a bloke appeared with a couple of plastic chairs for us. Fortunately the attendance was below twenty so there were enough seats left to accommodate latecomers like ourselves.

More first half action.

Twenty minutes in, Gwangju took the lead through their number thirteen. I don’t know his name and although it seems harsh, it doesn’t matter. He flicked the ball upwards and then volleyed home from over twenty yards. It was one of those shots that hung in the air but you knew from the moment that he struck it that the keeper wouldn’t be getting anywhere near it.

The view from the other corner.

It was quite a tight game with both defences seeming to have the measure of their opponents. The keepers looked confident and for a long time it appeared likely that the one goal would be enough to clinch the victory. Fifteen minutes from time though, Jeonju got a penalty which was confidently put away.

1 - 1.

The game opened up in the last quarter of an hour as both teams went for the winner. The Gwangju keeper made a couple of very good saves from close range shots, whilst one of his team mates rattled the crossbar at the other end. A draw was about right in the end in what had been an evenly matched contest.

There were more officials than fans.

We caught a taxi back into town for a night that eventually ended up in a coffee shop that had the gimmick of having about a dozen cats running around wild. Jen reckons that there are other places doing a similar thing, some with dogs, so I’ll look forward to seeking more of them out. Hopefully there might be one somewhere with pigs or horses wandering around between the tables. Don’t worry, I’ll take my camera next time.

For those of you with an interest in higher division football and/or Lee Dong Gook, Jeonbuk won 3-2 away at Daejeon with two goals from the Lion King. Jeonbuk regained pole position from Pohang whilst Lee Dong Gook’s brace took him to twelve goals from sixteen appearances in all competitions this season.

7-3. That’s not  a result that you see very often and it’s what my Mam would describe as ‘playing shotty in’. It’s the type of scoreline that makes you think of a kick about with your mates. Particularly with those mates who aren’t really keen on staying back in defence. Or those who have never played football before. If you hear of that result in an organised match, you’d think it would have had to have been a schools game, probably between under eights where they all chase after the ball like, well, seven year olds playing football.

But, it’s not necessarily always that way. There’s Real Madrid 7 Eintracht Frankfurt 3. The 1960 European Cup Final at Hampden Park that’s recognised as one of the best games ever. It was a bit before my time but my mate John Green was there as a boy and I don’t remember him ever describing watching Puskas, Di Stefano and Gento playing in a game of ‘shotty in’.

No defence?

 Alex Ferguson was there too watching that game and he was to subsequently meet Mr Green in a pre-season friendly maybe a dozen years or so later. The future Man Utd boss was winding down his playing career and my mate was by that time captaining his home town team Buckie Thistle.

John told me that he took great delight in letting Fergie know he was there with the sort of tackle where any contact with the ball is purely incidental. Fergie, after a muttered “FFS big fella, lets just take it easy” had what was probably one of the quieter afternoons of his life after that. If he had spent the second half constantly looking at his watch, I doubt that it was for the purpose of encouraging the ref to add more time on.

This game though, as I imagine that you had already suspected, was more like the kick around between mates. Mates, that is who were small boys and not mates who turned out each week for Real Madrid. Still, it was worth the trip.

Actually, the trip itself was worth the trip. Most people when they go to Asan will go by train. Generally the fast KTX train, sometimes the slightly slower Saemaul or Mugunghwa trains. All of them are fine and will get you there from Seoul in anything from thirty five mins to maybe an hour and a quarter.

There is another way though. Line One of the subway lines extends to about eighty kilometres south of Seoul and finishes just beyond Asan.  I wasn’t in a rush and so I thought I’d give it a try. Five stops west from Yeoksam to Sandang on Line 2 were followed by ten stops south on Line 4 to Geumjeong. Both of those trains were pretty full but fortunately I got a seat fairly quickly.

At Geumjeong I switched to Line 1 and rode that for twenty three stops until I reached Asan. I’d had to change trains for some reason at Cheonan and it took me just over two and a half hours in total. The Line 1 train was pretty quiet though and I caught up with my reading and my sleep at different points in the journey. Plus, at 2,500 won, you would probably have to walk to get there any cheaper.

Seoul subway - Line 1

As I got a taxi to the Yishunsin stadium I passed the next station along the line, Baebang. It would probably have been better to have continued on to there rather than get off at Asan. In fact the following station, Onyang Oncheon, might have been better still.

I still had fifteen minutes to spare when I got to the ground and so I had a wander around before I went in. There was a little shop with a beer fridge outside of it, but unfortunately the fridge was padlocked and the girl behind the counter didn’t have a key. So, I’d be watching this one without the benefit of a drink or two.

Yishunsin Stadium

Asan’s ground is probably one of the biggest that I’ve been in over here. Not in terms of capacity but in surface area. As usual there was a running track around the pitch, but there was sufficient space between the track and the stands to add another six or eight lanes to it, should they ever want to bid for the Olympics.  The main quirk at this place was an actual grass pitch as most teams at this level play on an artificial surface.

It had taken me a while to find my way in and as I emerged at the side of the pitch I realised that I had arrived just as the players were taking the field. I was tempted for a moment to follow them onto the pitch and walk along the line shaking hands but it was starting to rain so I left them to it and took a seat in the only stand which had the benefit of a roof. Asan were in yellow shirts and black shorts, Seoul in red shirts and black shorts.

Seoul Martyrs

Now, as I’ve already given the score away, I don’t know if you need bother with the rest. Besides, with ten goals it’s going to go on a bit. But as I got photos of some of the goals I might as well tell you what went on.

Asan got their first goal a minute into the game with a soft glancing header that I believe is usually described as something that the keeper could have thrown his cap on. Well, this keeper didn’t have a cap, although the header was so slow that he would have had time to nip home and get one if he’d wanted and still have been able to keep the ball out of the net.

It might have been an idea for him to have picked up a goalie shirt whilst he was getting the cap as well. His yellow shirt clashed with the home team’s kit and so he was wearing a blue bib. A lot of the time I mistook him for steward or a ballboy. Usually, it has to be said, whenever the other team had a shot at goal.

He's tall for a ballboy.

Half an hour in and there was still just the one goal in it. That was all about to change though and the award of a penalty to the Martyrs opened the floodgates. It had to be taken twice due to encroachment before Seoul got their equaliser.

They stayed out of the box for the second attempt.

Seoul’s goal didn’t really do them any favours as it just seemed to piss the home team off and by half time Asan were four one up.

A cross from the left brought Asan’s second goal. Everyone, including the keeper left the ball and it arrived at the back post where the loitering striker was able to stamp the ball home with his studs in the nonchalant manner of someone casually vandalising a cucumber frame.

The third came from a counter-attack where Asan found themselves with two men over. A shot from ten yards out was palmed up into the air by the keeper and it landed behind him and just over the line.

Right on half time Asan got another free-kick near the corner flag. Once again everyone left the ball alone and this time it went straight in.

Oh dear.

The second half started just as badly for the Martyrs as they conceded their fifth goal within a minute or two of the restart. I think the couple of players who had occasionally been hanging back in defence for Seoul had forgotten that they had changed ends and the Asan strikers had an easy enough task in walking the ball in.

There was better news five minutes later as Seoul pulled one back. The lad who scored even grabbed the ball afterwards and sprinted back to the centre-circle, bless him.

With twenty minutes left, Seoul got another one to make it 5-3. I’ve no idea if it was a shot or a cross and I suspect the player didn’t either. Whatever, it sailed over the head of the Asan keeper who may have been texting on his mobile and landed in the net.

The comeback was short lived though and Asan added a couple more in the closing minutes to extend their lead to 7-3.

That's all folks.

After the tenth goal of the afternoon Seoul revised their tactics and shot direct from the re-start. The Asan goalie mustn’t have had a phone signal as he managed to see that one coming and gather the ball as the final whistle blew.

I shared a taxi back to the station with Seoul Martyrs fan, Simon, who watches them regularly and who assured me that they weren’t normally as bad as that. It was just as well really, as I suspect that he might have had to take a turn in goal otherwise.

I wasn’t complaining though. It had been an entertaining afternoon. The standard might not have been up to the famous Real Madrid-Eintracht Frankfurt game, but it had been better than a kids match involving under-eights. At times, anyway.

It’s FA Cup time again with the sixteen K-League teams joining the remaining National League, Challengers League and University teams in the last thirty two. The draw is seeded, so each game features a top division club.

I hadn’t intended to go to a game as the Seoul match was the only one I could get to and I’ve been there enough times not to get too much of a buzz from watching their fringe players in a deserted stadium.

Someone at work decided that this would be a good opportunity for a ‘teambuilding’ session though and I would have felt more than a little bad-mannered turning down the invitation when they know how much of my spare time I spend going to football matches.

The good news was that we got out of work an hour early and by 6.30pm we were sat on benches outside the stadium drinking straight from litre bottles of Hite. That’s my kind of team-building activity. The tickets had been sorted in advance and some of the younger employees had been sent to the supermarket to buy the amount of supplies that would have been more appropriate for a month long trip.

Refreshments.

As kick-off time approached we found our seats in the East stand. There were a few hundred people there from my company, which is just as well as the attendance was a long way down on that of a league fixture. Yongin didn’t help much as they brought eight fans. Possibly the same eight that I’d seen in their recent away game at Goyang KB.

Unfortunately for Bob, his Mam had put his blue shirt in the wash.

As expected, Seoul had rested a few players. Edilson was out there on the pitch though, playing in the centre of defence and Dejan Damjanovic was on the bench in case it didn’t all go to plan. The first half was goalless and without much action. Yongin had a few chances but didn’t really look like scoring whilst Seoul never got out of second gear. Most of the fun came from watching the activities of the company ‘freshmen’ who appeared to have been practising their chants all week.

Stand up if you love your job.

I got the impression that a few of them had not been to a football game before and possibly wouldn’t be returning until the next team-building event, but they all knew the importance of appearing committed to the cause whilst their bosses were watching and they kept up the singing throughout the match.

 At half-time Seoul must have decided that it had been goalless for long enough and they brought on Dejan Damjanovic. It didn’t take him long to make an impact and once the first goal went in that was game over. Seoul added another three later in the second half making it a successful evening for all bar the Yongin Eight. It was just as well really as I dread to think how the freshmen would have taken it if Seoul had lost.

Everyone who had been good was given a balloon to take home.

After the game a few of us adjourned to the convenience store next to the stadium and continued our bonding over some more cans. There were a few shocks in the round with three National league teams progressing at the expense of their K-League opposition. Hopefully two of them will draw each other in the next round to ensure a lower division representative in the last eight.

It’s been six weeks since I’ve seen Jeonbuk play. A combination of games in the lower divisions, visits to new stadiums in the K-League and a few hiking trips has made it difficult to fit one of their games in. I hadn’t been to the Pohang Steel Yard for a match before though and so this game seemed an ideal opportunity to catch up with the progress of Middlesbrough’s greatest ever Korean ex-player, Lee Dong Gook.

Jeonbuk had lost three-one away at Seoul when I last saw them. Since then though they had done pretty well, with an unbeaten run in the league and they were now topping the table with nineteen points from their opening nine fixtures. Perhaps I’m a jinx.

Lee Dong Gook has been doing pretty well too, going into this game with nine goals from twelve appearances in all competitions. To make things a little more interesting, today’s opponents Pohang Steelers are second to Jeonbuk in the league table and are Lee Dong Gook’s former club and home town. He made his debut for Pohang in 1998 and with the exception of a loan spell in Germany and his time doing National Service, he played here until signing for the Boro eight years later.

Jen and I had been staying in the Palgongsan Provincial Park the night before after having done a bit of hiking and so getting to Pohang wasn’t as difficult as it would have been had we been travelling from Seoul. We got a taxi into Daegu and then a bus to Pohang. The buses ran approximately every ten minutes according to the bloke at the terminal and ours took about an hour and a quarter. It was a lot quicker and more convenient than the train, where the only one that would have got us to Pohang in time for the match left at nine in the morning and wound its way around the countryside for two hours.

As it was, we got to Pohang just before noon. After a quick lunch of gimbap and kimchi mandu we had a wander along to the Jukdo Market.

Jukdo Market

It’s mainly fish with lots of them still alive in tanks. I reckon that I’ve probably been to zoos with less livestock in my time. I thought these octopuses were pretty well trained not to run off. We did see some smaller ones trying to leap out of the bowl of water that they were in.

Remarkably well behaved.

As well as the seafood there was the odd butchers shop, including one with a fridge full of dog on the pavement outside. I’ve not really noticed dog meat very often, although there are plenty of restaurants that serve it, often specialising in a combination of dog and duck. I do wonder what Koreans would think if they saw a ‘Dog and Duck’ pub sign in the UK and whether they would be disappointed at having to settle of a bag of crisps to eat.

There was no doubt to the contents of this fridge though, with at least three large dogs in various states of dismemberment. Some limbs were skinned, others left with the skin on. I’d read that some Koreans can get a bit arsey about foreigners taking photos of dog meat, but nobody gave me a second glance.

Dog meat.

There were also some penis fish. I can’t imagine buying any of those either as I would feel as if I were letting the side down if I took a knife and fork to one of them. I did take a photo though, wondering if it would get me any nearer the top of the ‘fish porn’ searches in Google.

Penis fish

We took a taxi to the Steelyard, which I think is a great name for a football ground and bought 10,000 won tickets that you could use for any part of the ground apart from the South stand which was reserved for the Jeonbuk supporters. We chose the West stand, mainly in the hope that we wouldn’t have the sun in our eyes. There was only one gate open and we had to queue for a couple of minutes before getting in.

There weren’t many empty seats along the side and we ended up near the corner flag, quite close to the back. It was still a good view though, as the lack of a running track and the steep gradient in the stands meant that we were pretty near to the pitch. It’s probably the best designed of all the football stadiums that I’ve been to in Korea, appropriately sized with a 25,000 capacity and with a roof all of the way around. There was a section on the other side of the ground that was fully occupied by soldiers. They seemed to clap and cheer in time with each other, so perhaps it’s something that they cover in basic training.

East stand

Jeonbuk, who were in their usual green shirts, started the stronger of the two teams, with Pohang in their Dennis the Menace kit looking a little nervous on the ball. The visitors had left their two Brazillians, Eninho and Luiz Henrique on the bench. Lovrek started on the left side of midfield and Lee Dong Gook was up front on his own. He came close to scoring after quarter of an hour, curling a shot just beyond the top corner after a one-two on the edge of the box with Lovrek.

Five minutes later, the Lion King missed a far easier chance when he wellied the ball over the bar from a few yards out. It must have felt as if he was back at The Riverside.

Pohang Steelers on the attack.

The missed chances were forgotten a few minutes before half-time though as Lee Dong Gook got his tenth goal of the season when his shot from way out took a massive deflection and left the keeper with no chance. A minute before the break Jeonbuk doubled their lead when Park Won Jae volleyed home from the edge of the box, also against his former club and in his home town.

At half-time we had a wheel of fortune game where a bloke won a car. There had been a similar prize at the Chunnam Dragons match a couple of weeks ago and on both occasions I wondered how the relatively low gate receipts could justify that kind of prize.

That's right, drive it straight across the pitch.

My daughter and I were in the audience for the recording of the real Wheel of Fortune show a couple of years ago. We were in LA and thought that it might be quite interesting to visit a TV studio. I don’t think we got on the telly as we looked to have been carefully placed in the section where the less photogenic members of the audience sit. Still, it was something different.

Lee Dong Gook didn’t reappear at the start of the second half, having been replaced by big lunk Jeong Seong Hoon. I can only assume that he had picked up an injury as it was a bit early to regard the game as being in the bag and to look ahead to the next one.

West stand

Sure enough, fifteen minutes in, Pohang pulled a goal back with a free header at a corner. Jeonbuk’s task was made even harder a few minutes later when Jung Hoon picked up his second yellow of the afternoon. Perhaps him only having two names makes the refs more inclined to book him.

The home fans were really getting behind their team at this point and with the stadium around two-thirds full there was a decent atmosphere. It got a whole lot better as well when Pohang substitute Adriano Chuva equalised and then celebrated by donning a single white glove.

The momentum was all with Pohang by this time, with Chuva and former Northampton, Shrewsbury and Hamilton Academicals striker Derek Asamoah causing plenty of problems. Fifteen minutes from the end Pohang were awarded a penalty and Chuva converted it to give the home team a three-two victory.

3 - 2.

The win took Pohang back to the top of the table, dropping Jeonbuk down into second place two points behind. I’ve seen Jeonbuk three times this season and they have lost each of those games. As those are their only league defeats I think my theory that I may be a jinx could well have something in it.

We got a taxi to the train station where we were entertained by a row between a bloke on a mobility scooter, a pair of identically dressed female twins in their fifties and a fella who looked a little worse for wear. The Police Station was only thirty yards away and the drama was enough for them to come and break it up by taking the easier option of nicking the bloke who could walk. The twins followed as he was led away, haranguing him from a safe distance.

Don't mess with The Twins.

A slow train then took us to Daegu, followed by a much quicker one back to Seoul.

Sangju Sangmu are a new team in the K-League this season. Well, sort of. They are the team made up of players doing their national service and played in the past as Gwangju Sangmu. Gwangju was a bit of an odd place to base an Army team in bearing in mind the history of the uprising and subsequent massacre in 1980 and unsurprisingly the military didn’t have a great deal of support at their old stadium. The move to Sangju seems to have given them a new lease of life though and although it’s early days the locals appear to be very happy to have K-League football in their town.

Jen and I got the bus from Dong Seoul at 11.30am, getting there just before two. Unusually we made a point of trying to sort out our return tickets before we left the bus station and it’s just as well that we did. There were no seats on any of the buses going to Seoul after half past three. With the stadium being about half an hour away from the bus station, that would have meant leaving the game as soon as it had kicked off. Eventually we managed to book seats on a 6.15pm bus to Ansan which is a town south-west of Seoul but on the subway network.

The walk to the stadium turned out to be forty minutes, so in reality we wouldn’t have even been able to stay for the kick-off if we’d been limited to the Seoul bus with empty seats. The highlight of the walk was passing a couple of blokes turning over the soil in their back garden by way of a plough that incorporated a bicycle wheel. Luckily I had my camera with me.

The horse had a day off.

Once we were at the stadium we were directed to the ticket office where a very helpful bloke explained that the tickets were five thousand won each or two for a billion. Buying a pair didn’t seem like much of a bargain.

Sangju Civic Stadium

When we got inside the Sangju Civic Stadium it became apparent that it was a pretty decent ground. Okay, it had a running track and only the main stand was covered, but with a fifteen thousand capacity it was small enough not to seem deserted and there was a pleasant mountain backdrop. I’d estimate that there were about six thousand fans there, with a couple of hundred having made the trip from Seoul.

View towards the main stand

Whilst I quite liked the Sangju stadium, I wasn’t too taken with the home team’s strip. Someone had decided that dressing them up as Sunderland would be a good idea and it never is. It’s disappointing that they haven’t thought of turning out in camouflage gear. Seoul had left their AC Milan kit behind to avoid a clash and were wearing their rather natty Man City away kit with the black and red diagonal stripe on a white shirt.

The game started badly for Edilson, Seoul’s Brazilian centre-half, who looked to have received a crafty shove in the back just as he went for a header. Not only did the push cause him to take the ball smack in his face but he also managed to pick up a yellow card for whining about it. I suspect that he probably forgot his grievances for a while a few minutes later though when his Montenegrin team-mate Dejan Damjanovic opened the scoring for Seoul.

Samgju hadn’t been beaten in the league coming into this game and they soon fought back to draw level. It was quite a fortunate equaliser, with Seoul’s Park Yong Ho heading a fairly tame cross into his own net.

Sangju attacking in the first half.

Seoul were probably the better team for most of the first half with Djeparov putting himself about and Molina playing a lot deeper than usual and down the left. Ten minutes before the break they restored their lead as the unmarked Damjanovic got his second of the game with a free header.

It was end to end stuff for the remainder of the half with Sangju having a goal disallowed for offside, a decision that looked a bit harsh to me and then Molina hitting the post for Seoul with the rebound bouncing just out of reach of Damjanovic.

At the interval we were treated to a few songs from someone who looked as if he’d been at the peak of his career when the South Korean Army were busy fighting their war against the North rather than filling in their Saturdays with football games.

The half-time entertainment.

There wasn’t much in the way of refreshments, nor facilities and I had to go out of the stadium to use the toilet and to replenish my stock of beer. I think the ground is less than twenty years old so you’d think that inside toilets would have been something that the architect might have considered worth having.

When I was a kid, one of my Nannas had an outside toilet at her house in Sunderland and to a ten year old that was quite exciting. I’m over that sort of thing now though and after a few cans I’d rather stadiums had toilets that didn’t involve having to go out and then come back in again. Actually, that reminds me. I bought a house in the Bulgarian countryside a few years ago and that’s got an outside toilet too. Perhaps they are lot more common than I’d thought.

Trap 1 in Bulgaria.

I don’t know whether there were any threats of marches with heavy backpacks made in the Sangju dressing room at half time, but the team-talk had an immediate effect with an equaliser for the home side seconds after the restart as Choi Hyo Jin fired home from the edge of the box.

It stayed at two apiece until the seventy third minute when the Sangju captain, Kim Young Sam headed back over his advancing keeper, leaving Damjanavic to chase the ball into an empty net. It didn’t look to me as if the Seoul striker definitely got a touch, but when you’re on a hat trick you are going to claim it regardless.

Sangju weren’t giving up though and within a minute they were level again. Kim Jung Woo carved his way through the Seoul defence and got his captain off the hook for his earlier mistake with a very well taken goal.

Kim Jee Hyuk punches clear for Sangju

It wasn’t Kim Young Sam’s day though and eight minutes from the end he picked up a second yellow to cap a miserable afternoon. He’d had a really poor game when I saw the Army team at Chunnam a couple of weeks earlier too and I was beginning to wonder if he was keeping his place in the side due to his Dad being a Colonel or something.

There was a bit of a skirmish a couple of minutes later over Seoul not getting a penalty decision. I was disappointed that the squaddies in the home side didn’t all pile in like soldiers tend to do on a night out if one of their number is getting a bit of hassle. The stadium announcer managed to orchestrate some booing from the crowd though and that just about made up for it.

The game wasn’t over at three all and with two minutes remaining Seoul snatched a winner as substitute Hyun Young Min fired in a direct free kick from twenty five yards.

The winning goal.

Sangju finished the game with nine men as Yoon Yeo San picked up his team’s second red card of the afternoon in injury time. We got our bus to Ansan, which stopped at a few small towns on the way before arriving nearly four hours after setting off. With no idea where the subway was we ended up spending almost another hour in a taxi getting back to Seoul.

It was a decent trip though. Next time we’ll look to stay overnight and book our bus tickets in advance.

For my football fix last weekend I thought I’d head down to Gwangyang to watch Chunnam Dragons take on the army team Sangju Sangmu. It’s a fair distance from Seoul, 329km, and the easiest way seemed to be the direct bus from Dong Seoul.

The bus terminal  was pretty crowded and as I hadn’t bothered to pre-book my ticket I did wonder if I was going to struggle to get the bus I wanted. It was okay though and I got a seat on the 10.30am luxury service to Donggwangyang, as that’s the terminal in Gwangyang that’s nearest to the stadium. I took the opportunity to catch up on my sleep for a lot of the journey and four hours and twenty minutes after leaving Seoul I was there.

I had two hours to spare before kick-off and as the stadium was marked on the map that I’d picked up from Tourist Information, I thought I’d see if I could walk there. There was a basic flaw in my plan, however. The maps that most of the Tourist Offices give away in Korea aren’t drawn to scale. There seems to be a desire to include as many landmarks as possible, without giving too much consideration to geographical accuracy. If you imagine a map of the Lake District with Edinburgh shown just behind Skiddaw, and with Ireland looking close enough to reach on a pedalo, you wouldn’t be too far away. Until you tried to get there, that is.

By the time I’d messed about trying to reconcile what I could see with what was shown on the map I’d already used an hour up. I spotted the floodlights in the distance but it looked as if I’d either have to walk in a different direction to cross a river or else I’d be walking alongside a dual carriageway with no path. I took a taxi.

It's over there.

The taxi journey wasn’t without its difficulties either. You’d think that even if two people speak very little of each others language, but one of them had a map and was able to point at the only football stadium in town, then that would be enough. But no, it was as if the driver had never seen a map before and seemed convinced that the drawing of the ground was actually the local steelworks. Eventually he got it and ten minutes later we were there. If he did take the most direct route then I’m glad that I didn’t walk it.

Gwangyang Stadium - The steelworks looks very similar apparently.

It was seven thousand won to get in and you could sit anywhere you fancied. The only player that I recognised was the Chunnam goalie and captain, the former national team keeper Lee Woon Jae. It seemed a bit of a surprise when he turned up at Chunnam this season rather than taking a coaching role somewhere, but the move seems to have given him a new lease of life. Both teams had begun the season well, with ten points from their first six games. It was an especially impressive start for the army team who were still unbeaten after their relocation fron Gwangju to Sangju.

We had a bit of confusion before kick-off when the national anthem was played. Everyone traditionally turns to face the Korean flag but unfortunately you couldn’t see it from where I was sat in the East Stand as it was above us and behind the press box. Those who knew of its location turned in the approximate direction, other non-regulars made do with facing the large screen in the hope that the flag might appear there.

So where's the flag?

 The crowd had barely re-orientated themselves and sat down before Sangju continued their good start to the season by going ahead with a goal from Kim Jung Woo after three minutes.

This cross led to the goal.

Both sides settled down a bit after that with a lot of Chunnam’s best moves coming when  Brazilian Weslley and Columbian Javier Reina were involved. Weslley  had a decent chance just before half time but the Sangju keeper managed it block it with his legs.

After the interval I noticed these two fellas combining a bit of childcare with knocking back the soju. Let’s hope they remembered that the kid was in the box when it was time to go.

Family day out.

A Chunnam equaliser always seemed on the cards in the second half, but it just didn’t come and the army team held on for a victory that moved them up into third place. I got a taxi back to the bus terminal and then a bus to Suncheon where I intended to do some hiking the next day.

View from the North-West corner.

For those of you keeping up with the progress of Lee Dong Gook, Jeonbuk won 2-1 away at Daejeon, but he didn’t score. The win kept Jeonbuk in contention in second place, ahead of Sangju on goal difference.

There was an Asian Champions League match at Sangam Stadium last Tuesday between Korean champions FC Seoul and their Japanese counterparts Nagoya Grampus. As you may know, there’s a bit of rivalry between the two countries and so I thought I’d go along and see how it went.

I don’t know very much about Japanese football, but I had heard of Nagoya Grampus. They are the club that Gary Lineker wound down his career with in the days when they were known as Grampus Eight. They are also the club that Arsene Wenger managed before moving to Arsenal. It’s hard to imagine that a club in Arsenal’s position would pluck a relatively unknown manager from an Asian club these days.

Champions League games kick off at 8pm so I had plenty of time to make my way to the World Cup Stadium. There weren’t as many people milling around outside as usual, suggesting that the visit of the Japanese champions wasn’t quite the attraction that I’d thought it would have been. I paid fourteen thousand won for an East stand ticket and another thousand for a programme in the hope that Grampus might have a player or two that I knew of. They didn’t.

Not much of a crowd.

I hadn’t had my tea so I got myself a six inch pizza from the Pizza Hut stall. They only sell one type, the toppings being sweet potato, pineapple and meat that I couldn’t identify. Possibly pork. It was as good as you’d imagine it to be.

It’s free seating in the East Stand and I found a place in the lower tier about eight rows up. The small kid in front of me, recognizing that I might not have been born and bred in Seoul, spent the build up to the game quizzing me on my knowledge of English football.

“Do you know Manchester United?”

“Yes”

“Do you know Park Ji Sung?”

“Yes”

“Do you know Rooney?”

“Yes. He is my friend, sometimes he drives me to the shops in his car.”

“Really?”

“No”

“Do you know Lee Chung Yong?”

“Yes”

“Do you know Chelsea?”

“Yes”

“Do you know Drogba?”

“Yes. He has a horse and he rides it past my house on his way to Starbucks.”

“Really?”

“No”

I thought that I would have a turn at asking the questions.

“Do you know Middlesbrough?”

“No.”

“Do you know Lee Dong Gook?”

“No.”

“Do you know Phil Stamp?”

“No.”

How could he not know of this fella?

Fortunately the teams came out at that point and we could call a halt to the cultural exchange. There was a minute’s silence for the victims of the recent earthquake and those of the not so recent killing of anti-government protesters by the Korean police on April 19^th 1960. I’m not sure if the anniversary of the massacre is remembered with a minute’s silence every year or whether it was included because we were having one anyway.

If the intention was to give the Koreans something of their own to pay their respects to, it didn’t work. I didn’t see anyone bother to stand up and the vast majority of people around me ignored it and carried on chatting amongst themselves.

As the game kicked off a few of the couple of hundred Grampus fans behind the goal lit their flares. It was an impressive sight, albeit something that would get you a three year banning order in the UK.

Grampus fans

FC Seoul had most of the early possession, putting a bit of pressure on the Grampus defence. It was Grampus that opened the scoring though with a scrambled effort against the run of play after twenty six minutes.  Seoul, with all four of their non-Korean players on the pitch, had plenty of opportunities in the remainder of the first half but went off at the interval a goal behind.

Seoul go close just before half time.

Seoul continued to press after the break and it seemed likely that they would equalize before long. The Grampus keeper had a tendency to palm the ball away and it just looked like a matter of time before someone would take advantage. Irritatingly, the 2010 World Cup craze for vuvuzelas shows no sign of fading in Seoul and whenever Grampus had possession the home fans would recreate the sound of the previous summer.

Another dodgy FC Seoul haircut

As the second half progressed the Seoul players got increasingly frustrated with the Grampus timewasting. Molina, in particular, was taking every opportunity to complain to the officials whilst Yeo Hyo Jin gave one Japanese player something legitimate to writhe about by hacking him down in the centre circle.

Molina takes a break from moaning at the ref.

The home team continued to press as time started to run out with Molina curling one a fraction wide from the angle of the box with about twenty minutes remaining. Just as I was looking forward to a frantic last ten minutes Grampus hit Seoul on the break and killed the game stone dead with their second goal of the evening. The two goal victory took Grampus to the top of the four team group ahead of Seoul on goal difference.