Trail of the Lion King

This was another late change of plan. Originally I was going to travel to Cheonan to watch their third division game with Chuncheon. The appeal of that one wasn’t so much the football but the fact that despite it looking as if it was about forty miles away, I could get there on the subway. Some of the lines have been extended way beyond the city and I quite fancied the idea of a subway ride that lasted for a couple of hours and ended up a long way out of Seoul and in the middle of nowhere.

The weather forecast was pretty bad though as a typhoon had arrived and was ripping off roofs and uprooting trees. I always think roofs should be spelt rooves, like with hoof and hooves. Perhaps it is. Anyway, Cheonan don’t have roofs or rooves on their stands to rip off, mainly because they don’t really have much in the way of stands, and for that reason I thought it might not be a lot of fun in poor weather.

Jen suggested that we go to Chuncheon instead. There wasn’t any football but there was a chicken eating festival, some fireworks and a high wire display. Well, I like chicken and fireworks and a high wire show during a typhoon has to be worth watching. So that’s where we went. Almost. We’d been to see an American comedian called Ted Alexandro the night before. He was pretty good with a nice laid back delivery. He wasn’t mean about anyone he shouldn’t have been mean about and he made me laugh. However it was a late night, culminating in tequilla and that meant it was after lunch before we got to the bus station the next day. When we went to the ticket counter, so many people were keen to see tightrope walking chickens letting off rockets that there wasn’t an available seat on a bus for nearly four hours.

Hmm, what to do? Jeonbuk had a game that evening and so we got a bus to Jeonju instead. At least we would have if there had been one. We ended up travelling to Iksan and then taking a half hour connection to Jeonju from there instead. Both of those buses went on time and so we got there about half past four.  We found a hotel which was very nice but a bit dull, with none of the little idiosyncrasies that I’ve come to expect from the Korean Love Motels. It did have ’his and hers’ computer terminals side by side in the room however, perfect for Korean couples on an illicit tryst to update their Facebook status with something like ’Kim Sang Mi is working late with Lee Chang Jae’.   I suppose the most notable feature of the place was that check-in wasn’t until 9pm and so with our tea time arrival we had to pay the afternoon quickie rate in addition to the overnight cost.

We took a taxi to the World-uh Cup Stadium and bought tickets for behind the goal with the Jeonbuk fans. It was the usual formation for the home team with a couple of defensive midfielders and three more attacking players supporting lone striker Lee Dong Gook.

Jeonbuk, in green, had the best of the early play against Pohang, who were wearing a Dennis The Menace style kit. Lee Dong Gook shot just past the post in the opening minutes after a good burst into the box from wide. A lot of the pitch had been relaid after the criticism of the surface for the recent League Cup Final here. Both penalty areas and most of the centre of the pitch was new and it looked to be a lot more solid than the replacement turf that I’d seen midweek at Seongnam.

Brazilian midfielder Luiz Henrique was still missing but his fellow countryman Eninho was having a great game. He fired over the bar from distance after about twenty minutes and then broke into the box and forced a good save from the keeper, getting his shot off despite the chasing defender being all over him. If he had gone down he might very well have got a penalty.

A couple of minutes later he should definitely have got a penalty as he cut in from the right. He was fouled outside of the box and the ref played the advantage only for him to be brought down a couple of yards inside the penalty area. The ref bottled it though and to the fury of the Jeonbuk players gave a free kick for the original offence.

Pohang suffered a bit of a setback after half an hour as Kim Hyung Il was sent off for hacking at Jeonbuk’s Kim Hyung Bum. It was one of those fouls that fell somewhere between a yellow and a red. As he had already been booked the ref was spared that difficult decision and settled for giving him a second yellow that he couldnt complain about.

When Lee Dong Gook put one over the bar after a bit of Vidukaesque juggling with his back to goal it looked as if it would be scoreless at half time. A minute before the interval though, Eninho twisted his way past a defender and was pulled down. It didn’t look a lot more blatant than the previous two appeals, but cumulatively the three together meant that the ref wasn’t going to look the other way again. The Brazilian took it himself and drove the ball home high to the keeper’s left to give Jeonbuk the lead at the break.

At half time Jen happened to mention that when she had lived in Jeonju ten years ago she used to go and watch Jeonbuk. They played at a different stadium in those pre-World Cup days and wore different colours. Mind you, in a rare case of continuity they’ve had their current name since 1994, which is a long time by K-League standards.

As a little half time interlude I’m going to tell you about fan death. Not supporters being struck by typhoon dislodged roofs or rooves, but the Korean belief that if you go to sleep in a room with an electric fan turned on and you don’t have adequate ventilation, then you are in serious danger of not waking up.

They have a few explanations as to why this happens, ranging from the fan using all the oxygen itself, to the fan creating a vortex where no oxygen exists, to hypothermia and even the fan chopping up the oxygen molecules. Fans in Korea are sold with a timer on them and come with instructions recommending its use just in case you accidentally fall asleep with the fan on.

I’m not one to live dangerously, so if I’m using my fan rather than the air conditioning, I tend to leave a window open. Not too far, just enough for a psychopathic axe murderer to force his way in whilst I’m asleep. And that’s enough Korean culture for the time being, the teams are on their way back out.

Mind you, it looked as if Jeonbuk had been sat with the electric fan on in the dressing room during half time as they didn’t look too lively at the restart and a cross from the right was  easily converted by Jung Hong Jeon for the equaliser. This warranted a change of tactics from the home team and the Croatian Krunoslav Lovrek was brought on to partner Lee Dong Gook up front. It worked pretty quickly too, with the Lion King running onto a through ball on the hour and calmly finishing for Jeonbuk to regain the lead.

It got better for Jeonbuk a few minutes later when Eninho got his second of the game after some nice build up play. That should really have been it, but Jeonbuk never really looked comfortable. They had Choi Chul Soon sent off with quarter of an hour to go and that gave Pohang a bit of encouragement. The visitors pulled a goal back in the last ten minutes through Lee Jin Ho and then in the closing stages Kim Min Sik made a very good save to deny Pohang an equaliser.

There was a nice touch at the final whistle when one of the Pohang players, Shin Kwang Hoon came down to the Jeonbuk end to bow to the supporters. He had recently returned to Pohang after a couple of years on loan with Jeonbuk and he got a warm reception.

The win kept Jeonbuk firmly in a play-off spot and just  three points behind leaders Jeju United with nine games remaining.

When I was at Seongman for the Jeonbuk game the previous Saturday I’d noticed a couple of banners advertising future matches that I hadn’t been aware of. I couldn’t identify the opponents but it was enough for me to check a few details out when I got home. The first game (this one) turned out to be a K-League game against Suwon, brought forward because of Champions League commitments. The second game, a fortnight later, was the first leg of the Champions League Quarter Final, also against Suwon. So with the second leg to follow, that will be three games between the same two teams in a three-week spell. 

Seongnam is easy for me to get to. I left work at a quarter past six and forty minutes later I was at the Yatap subway station. The stop before Yatap is Moran, which is well-known in Seoul for the market that sells both live and cooked dogs. I’ve not been and had a look yet, possibly because they don’t have a football team, but at some point I’m sure I’ll get off the subway there and have a nose around. I won’t be eating any dog meat whilst I’m here though. 

I like to think that I’m quite adventurous with food, which surprises me as I was a picky eater as a kid. In those days I would insist upon eating exactly the same thing for tea every single day until at what must have been approximately yearly intervals I would suddenly tire of it and  move on to something new. I could never predict when a change in habit was coming either which would infuriate my Dad as he had by that time began buying whatever I was eating in bulk. My choices, in no particular order of preference or sequence,  ranged from the fairly normal hot dogs, to pilchards on toast, then a tin of ravioli and for one memorable year or so, date sandwiches. This, as the name suggests, consisted of about half a packet of compressed dates between two slices of Mothers Pride. No butter, though, that would just be odd. I work with a few Omanis these days and they eat a lot of dates. I’ve yet to see any of them put a few between two slices of bread though. 

Not surprisingly, I couldn't find any pictures of Date Sandwiches.

 I eat a lot more varied diet these days.  I’ve already had the silkworm pupa out here and am looking forward to trying the still wriggling baby octopus legs. I’m pretty sure that I once ate half a cat  in Spain too, despite it being described as rabbit on the menu. Dog, though, is a step too far for me. 

I’ve always had dogs whenever my circumstances allowed it. There’s a couple of them living in my house in the UK now, although it’s my daughter who looks after them as I’m never there these days. One of the best things about going home is taking them for a walk in the same fields where I’ve walked with my other dogs over the last forty years. 

When I was about six we got a beagle. We’d been to Hutton Rudby, looked at some puppies and then when I came downstairs on Christmas morning one of them was in the kitchen. Joker wasn’t a very good dog though, if he ever got out of the garden he would run for miles whilst we chased after him. When he couldn’t get out of the garden he would eat the rose trees, yelping as the thorns dug into his mouth, but still not stopping. He was a  bit inbred and he had regular fits  but I regarded him as my dog and I loved him. Especially when he would put his head out of the car window so that his ears could flap in the wind. 

Me and my dog, 1972.

There have been plenty of others between Joker and the present two and I’ve had a lot of pleasure out of all of them. So whilst I know there’s no moral difference between eating sheep and eating dogs, it’s not for me. At least, not until one of the current pair chews my shoes again. 

After my visit to Tancheon Stadium four days earlier I knew my way to the ground and so didn’t need to bother with a taxi this time. The ground is ten minutes walk from the subway, just over the river and it was a great view as I approached in the dusk. 

It's just like a proper photo...

It made me think that it might be possible to cycle down to a game here from my apartment in Yeoksam just by following the river. I might have to look into that and give it a go sometime when there’s a weekend fixture. 

On Saturday I went into the West Stand, so this time I thought I’d sit on the opposite side to get a different perspective. I paid nine thousand won, which is the same as the travelling Suwon fans behind the goal to my left paid. There were about two hundred and fifty of them, compared to the thirty or so Seongnam supporters doing the singing in the North Stand. There were maybe another thousand people in total in the ground. Of all the fans I’ve seen over here I think Suwon are the best. They seem to turn out in bigger numbers and are more vocal that any of the other teams. Fortunately for them they’ve now got something to shout about after a poor start in the league. They sacked their manager, Cha Bum Kun, earlier in the season and since then have put a good run of form together that looks like getting them a play-off spot. 

Suwon fans.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned how the League Championship is decided over here yet, possibly because its taken me a while to get to the bottom of it, but now is probably as good a time as any. 

The fifteen teams in the league play each other home and away for a total of twenty-eight games. At the end of that the teams in the top six go into the play-offs. The higher up the table you finish though, the easier the play offs are. The first stage takes place a fortnight after the end of the season when on the Saturday the third placed team get home advantage against the sixth placed team. The following day it’s fourth at home to fifth. 

The winners of these two ties meet in midweek for the right to face the second placed team and also to determine the third Champions League spot. There are four Champions League places available. The top two in the table qualify automatically and the FA Cup winners get the fourth spot. 

The play off between the team that finished second and the winner of the 3rd/4th/5th and 6th teams takes place four days later, three weeks after the end of the season. I can’t decide whether I think the second placed team would benefit from their opponents playing their third game in a week or whether they would be rusty after their three-week lay-off. 

The winners of this game play the team that finished top of the table over two legs. The first game takes place in the midweek after the semi and then the second leg four days later, a month after the season ends.  I’m looking forward to seeing the play-off games, not least because it extends the season into December when we should get some real football weather. I expect to get to at least four out of the six games, possibly all six if Suwon, Seongnam and Seoul are involved and are at home for the midweek games. 

December seemed a long way off as this game started though, it was as if I was watching a football match in a sauna and my shirt was drenched in sweat just from the exertion of sitting motionless. Seongnam were in yellow shirts and black shorts whilst Suwon were in all blue. 

That's the main stand.

 Both sides seemed pretty cagey, perhaps not wanting to give too much away in the first of the three games. The pitch didn’t help though with some sections of new turf looking as if it had been rolled out just minutes before the match started. The turf quickly bunched up whenever it was trodden on, whilst the ruts elsewhere made control and passing a bit of a lottery. 

Former West Brom midfielder Kim Do Heon was putting himself about for Suwon against another of his former clubs. He had a long-range shot halfway through the first half that went just past the post and a few minutes later he popped up as the last man to get a vital block in. 

The Seongnan Ultras.

It was scoreless at the interval and there weren’t too many highlights on the big screen. Fortunately they also showed the best of the action from the previous game here, Seongnam’s one nil victory over Jeonbuk. It’s great that all the K-League stadiums seem to have the big screens. It puts the Boro to shame with our scoreboard that looks as if it was made in the days when I was still eating tinned ravioli every night for tea and uses the same technology as those 1970’s digital watches that had the red numbers on them. 

The Suwon fans began the second half well with both their large Che Guevara flags getting an airing. On the pitch though it was Seongnam who were on top with Radoncic blazing a chance over the bar and Cho Dong Keon having one disallowed for offside. A couple of players got booked for a flare up near me causing the bloke in front  of me to get a telling off from his young kid for giving the ref a bit of stick. 

"Pack it in Dad"

As the game moved in to the final twenty minutes Seognam missed their best chance to date with Cho Dong Keon squaring for the Columbian Molina who could only steer it past the post. Whilst most of the Seongnam fan chanted his name, the bloke who had just been told off threw some soju fuelled abuse his way and earned another lecture from his son. 

"I SAID, PACK IT IN!!!"

Suwon never looked out of the game though and in heavy rain Ha Tae Goon forced a good save from the Seongnam keeper. Towards the end Suwon were reduced to ten men as Yang Sang Min picked up a second yellow, for shirt pulling. He was a bit unlucky as he was having his own shirt pulled at the same time and had the Seongnam man not gone to ground as if he’d been tazered, the free kick might easily have gone the other way. 

Seongnam on the attack

Seongnam hit with woodwork in the final seconds, but a goalless draw seemed a fair result. Neither side seemed prepared to give anything away and I’m looking forward to the Champions League game between them  on the fifteenth of this month. The point was enough to take Seongnam to the top of the table on goal difference, with Suwon moving ahead of Busan and into seventh place, two points away from a play-off position. For those following the progress of Lee Dong Gook’s Jeonbuk, their lack of a midweek game saw them slip to fifth, three points behind the new leaders but with a game in hand.

I’d made plans to go hiking on the day of this game but I slept in and was then discouraged by the weather from doing much else. At the moment it seems as if the rainy season is never ending. I try to only do interesting stuff on a weekend, but unfortunately ended up having to try and salvage something from the day with a trip to the big supermarket Homeplus for some shopping. I wouldn’t normally have mentioned it but I saw something on the way in that I thought you might like to know about. The Chuseok holiday is approaching and it’s quite a big deal over here. People get three days off work and they tend to go back to their home town to pay their respects to their dead ancestors.

If they have any live ancestors they usually give them a present and this years ’must have’ gift appears to be a Spam Box Set. You can get them in various sizes depending, I suppose, on the amount of respect you have for the intended receipient. Some of the more extravagant boxes include bottles of what I’m guessing is a suitable dressing for tinned chopped pork.

Happy Chuseok

After the excitement of a trip to the shops I took the forty minute ride on the subway to Seongnam’s ground. It’s actually the closest K-League stadium to me, so it’s a little surprising that it’s taken me six months to see my first game there. I wasn’t quite sure of the directions once I got out of the subway so I thought I’d take a taxi. The first three drivers that I tried appeared not to understand Tancheon Soccer Stadium, nor my mime of an exquisitely crafted chip into the top corner. When I got into taxi number four I realised why the others weren’t interested. We turned the first corner thirty yards away and I could see the stadium just ahead. It was no more than a ten minute walk.

The view on exiting the taxi.

I bought a ticket for the west stand for twelve thousand won on the basis that it had the biggest roof. The rain was still coming down and I wanted to be sure of staying dry. If I’d taken the option of joining the fans behind the goal then I could have got in for seven thousand won. The players were about to come out onto the pitch as I took my seat and a guard of honour was waiting for them, complete with balloons in the team colours.

Guard of Honour with balloons

The balloons were released as the players stood for the National Anthem and they floated a couple of hundred feet up into the air. Unfortunately the weight of the rain slowed the ascent of the balloons and then as they got wetter it caused them to drift back down again and litter the pitch. The ref had to stop proceedings at one point and enlist the help of a player to burst them.

Away they go, although not for long.

The stadium looked as if it used to be the classic multi purpose sports facility, with the pitch inside an athletics track, an open topped oval bowl and one big covered stand. A recent refurbishment though had added a roof to the rest of the oval and it had continued around to protect the people sitting in the lower tier of the main stand. It looked a bit odd and I think it would have been  better if the main stand had been left as it was. The roof on the lower section seemed to unnecessarily restrict the view, both of the sky and of the areas of the pitch that were obscured by the stanchions.

The main West Stand with the new lower tier roof and the Jeonbuk fans in the South Stand.

The pitch was in a terrible condition. Some areas were grassless and rutted as if someone had been tractor racing on them, other parts had been patched by new turf  that looked as if it had been freshly laid over the top of the existing surface. It cut and bunched up whenever anyone went within five yards of it.

Lee Dong Gook was captaining Jeonbuk. He was wearing a fluorescent orange armband reminiscent of the one I was given as part of a road safety campaign as a small child. If only I’d been able to see into the future all those years ago as I played football in the playground with the orange armband on my duffle coat, I could have imagined I was Lee Dong Gook rather than Georgie Best. He was wearing fluorescent orange boots too, something that would have would have been deemed akin to witchcraft if I’d turned up at Fredrick Nattrass Junior school wearing something similar in 1971.

Jeonbuk, in their white away strips,  played with their usual five man midfield formation,  Lee Yo Han and Sung Jong Hyun sitting deep and Eninho, Kang Seung Jo and Kim Hyung Bum supporting lone striker Lee Dong Gook. Seongnam, who were in yellow shirts and black shorts played a similar system with former Partizan Belgrade striker Dzenan Radoncic leading the line.

A Seongnam corner, attacking the South Stand.

Not a lot happened in the first fifteen minutes or so, Jeonbuk had a couple of long range shots, but I think both teams were struggling to adapt to the state of the pitch. There was plenty of support from the travelling fans, most of the three hundred or so that had made the trip were in their usual green shirts and they kept up the singing throughout. Seongnam had about fifty fans in the north stand, but they didn’t really make much of a contribution. There were perhaps a further thousand people in total shared between the east and west stands.

As the half went on Seognam seemed to be adjusting to the conditions better than Jeonbuk, who I felt were missing the influence of Luiz Henrique in midfield. The home side should have gone ahead after twenty six minutes when one of them broke from midfield like Alan Foggon used to do but then after a neat one-two put his shot over the bar in a finish that was more like Billy Woof. It was a temporary reprieve for Jeonbuk though as a couple of minutes later Radoncic took a pass on the edge of the box, turned well and put Seognam one up.

1-0.

I missed the build up to the goal unfortunately as I was trying to see what television programme the bloke sat in front of me was watching on his mobile phone.

I think it was what the Koreans call 'Dramas' and we call 'Soaps'.

It should really have been 2-0 to Seongnam a few minutes later when all Kim Jin Yong had to do was square the ball to Radoncic, but he greedily had a shot. That was it for the first half apart from a yellow card for Jeonbuk midfielder Lee Yo Han when he slid in two footed and might easily have got a red.

At half time we were treated to the sight of the groundsman trying to repair the large patch of new turf near the tunnel whilst being hindered by fans or sponsors standing on it to take part in a competition to see who could hit a thirty yard pass nearest to a target. Quite why they couldn‘t have moved out of his way and shot from twenty seven yards instead wasn’t wholly apparent and the turf didnt look much better as the second half kicked off.

That'll help the new turf settle.

There were a few chances in the second half, Lee Dong Gook played a nice lobbed through ball for Kim Hyung Bum which brought a good save from the keeper and Radoncic nearly added to his first half goal with a shot from out side the area that Jeonbuk keeper Kim Min Sik managed to tip onto the inside of the post. The Columbian international Mauricio Molina had a decent opportunity for Seongnam only to put it wide when clear through on the keeper, causing him to welly the advertising hoarding behind the goal in frustration.

Seongnam attacking the North Stand end.

Jeonbuk, despite moving Sim Woo Yeon up into attack from central defence, never really looked like scoring and it remained 1-0. The Senognam fans in the north stand celebrated at the end by lighting a flare as they moved ahead of Jeonbuk and into second place in the table.

Celebration time.

The defeat meant that Jeonbuk slipped back down to fourth position, although they were within three points of new leaders Jeju United.

Attending this Korean FA Cup quarter final was a bit of a bonus as when I’d discovered a few days earlier that it was a 7.30pm kick-off I’d as good as decided that getting there was not really possible. I’d been to Suwon a week previously for the South Korea v Nigeria game that started at 8pm and only just managed to make that. The half an hour earlier start for this game meant that it didnt really seem like a feasible proposition. I couldn’t quite get it out of my mind though and deliberately didn’t plan anything for that evening, keeping my options open in case I decided to give it a try.

What finally convinced me to go was that when I looked out of my office window at a quarter to six, it was pouring down. Not only that, but all of the three umbrellas that I currently own were in my apartment rather than under my desk. Bear with me, it does make sense. Well, more sense than a lot of stuff I do.  I remembered that the first time that I visited Suwon it took me an hour on the subway and so I thought to myself that as I don’t have to go outside of my office block to get to the subway, I could be at Suwon for around ten past seven without the prospect of the soaking that walking from the office to my apartment would bring about. Clever, eh? Perhaps. I might just have been delaying the inevitable encounter with the rain and I’d also no idea how long a taxi would take to get from Suwon subway to the Blue Wings Stadium, but in a classic piece of the short-term thinking that influences most of my actions these days I gave it a try.

It all went very well to begin with. I left the office bang on six o’clock and by ten past I was on the first train. I was at Sadang for twenty past where I made the first of two line changes and at ten past seven I arrived at Suwon where I was pleased to discover that it wasn’t raining. So far so good. There were a line of taxis  waiting outside of the station and I was fortunate to get a driver who was aware that there was a football stadium in Suwon. Actually there’s two stadiums, but as I was going to the more famous of them I wasn’t worried.

The plan fell apart as we hit the rush hour traffic and we crawled along with the game having already kicked off and me alternating between looking at my watch and peering at the skyline trying to catch a glimpse of the distinctive winged roof of  Suwon’s ground. Ten minutes after kick off we arrived there after what was close on a half hour taxi journey to cover perhaps three or four miles. He dropped me at the south east corner of the stadium which was an error on my part as I should have remembered that the ticket office was over at the north west corner. I walked the length of the winged west stand, noticing the Jeonbuk fans behind the goal in the south stand.

It's a great roof.

A couple of touts approached as I got near to the ticket office and offered me seats in the east stand for five and ten thousand won respectively. Normally I would have taken one of them but as I just wanted to be inside the ground as quickly as possible and I didn’t want to have to walk to the other side of the stadium, I  knocked them back and went to the ticket office instead. Fortunately there was no queue, less fortunately they told me that you had to be a membership card holder to sit in the west stand. I bought a ticket for the east stand for twelve thousand won and set off for my walk around the stadium, trying not to catch the eyes of the smug looking touts on the way past.

By the time I got into the ground the clock on the scoreboard showed that eighteen minutes had gone and that the game was still goalless. Lee Dong Gook was back up front for Jeonbuk, having missed the last two games due to his suspension for elbowing a Busan defender in the chops a couple of weeks earlier. There wasn’t really much of a crowd, with the upper tiers virtually empty. Jeonbuk looked to have brought a few hundred fans with them whilst Suwon had a very good turnout behind the north stand goal.

After recovering from his sore elbow, Lee Dong Gook is back leading the line.

The FA Cup winners qualify for one of the four Champions League spots over here and so it carries a bit more of a reward than just the glory of winning the trophy. ’Just the glory’ sounds a bit glib, I’d love the Boro to have `just the glory’ of winning the FA Cup. For the first few years of our existence we had never got beyond the last eight, the first one hundred and twenty one years to be precise and my childhood was littered with losing quarter finals at places such as Birmingham, Orient and Wolves. It was the Riverside years before we managed to get to semi finals and even once the final itself. But we’ve never won it and it doesnt look too realistic a dream for us in the near future.

We had a great chance a couple of years ago with the big boys having been knocked out and only a home tie against Championship side Cardiff between us and a Wembley semi final. Lee Dong Gook was still at the Boro then, but he was out of favour by that time and didn’t even make the bench in what was one of the most disappointing Middlesbrough performances that I can remember.

I’ve just googled the team from that day and we had some really useful players then, streets ahead of the ones that we have now. It was a team that was more than capable of beating the other semi finalists Portsmouth, Barnsley and West Brom and lifting the trophy.

Schwarzer, Young, Wheater, Huth, Pogatetz, O’Neil (Johnson 59), Arca, Rochemback, Downing, Alves (Mido 46), Sanli.
Subs Not Used: Turnbull, Boateng, Grounds.

But, whatever. It’s gone. Just like Birmingham, Orient and Wolves, all games that, perhaps with the optimism of youth, I had also expected us to win and ended up disappointed.

It was a scrappy remainder of the first half at Suwon with a few yellows being handed out, mainly to the Jeonbuk players. Luiz Henrique had a real go at the ref at one point, who you could see was desperate for the ball to go out so that he could call him over and book him for dissent.

Green Army.

Ten minutes before half time Suwon took the lead with a Kwak Hee Ju header after a disputed free kick was floated into the box. The Suwon fans behind the goal celebrated by bouncing up and down, similar to the way that Rangers do, edging a yard or two from side to side as they did it. They also waved their flags, two of which had the face of Che Guevara on them. He seems pretty popular at the football over here, Jeonbuk had no fewer than five flags with that iconic image on them.

Five Che's for Jeonbuk, two Che's for Suwon.

At half time I went in search of something to eat, having not had anything since lunchtime. It was fairly meagre pickings with a large bag of crisps being the best option. One of the differences that I’ve noticed between home and over here is the way people eat their crisps. In the UK we tend to open the packet at the top, the show-offs amongst us occasionally squeezing the bag to pop it open. In Korea though, crisps are eaten from the side of the packet, with a vertical tear being made and then the bag held longways. Just an observation.

The second half wasn’t much better than the first. I moved into the upper tier and closer to the Suwon fans as that was the end that Jeonbuk were attacking. The home supporters kept up a good level of support throughout the half with songs to the tunes of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Yellow Submarine amongst others.

View from the upper tier.

 Lee Dong Gook didnt really have any scoring chances, although on the whole nor did his team mates. Each side had a man sent off as the consquences of all the early yellows took effect and as the time ticked away Jeonbuk gradually threw more men forward. In the dying minutes they were playing with a line of four strikers as well as Lee Dong Gook roaming just behind them. The remaining four outfield Jeonbuk players had to somehow cover all the midfield and defence positions between them and some quite sizeable gaps opened up as they pressed for an equaliser. Inevitably Suwon broke away and in injury time Yeom Ki Hun added the second goal that sealed their semi final spot.

Two Nil and its all over.

As I left the ground at the end I was approached by a teenage lad who asked me if I was Joe Johnson. As the only bloke of that name that I’m familiar with is a fifty odd year old snooker player I was happy to confirm that I wasn’t. This tends to happen to me quite a bit, being mistaken for someone else. At the baseball game at the weekend I was asked if I was the pitcher’s Dad. It’s as if a foreigner wouldn’t be at a sporting event unless he had a specific reason for being there, other than wanting to watch the game.

Surely some mistake.

I checked for other famous Joe Johnson’s on the internet afterwards, doubting that mid-eighties snooker stars would have much of a fanbase over here and uncovered an American basketball player that seemed much more likely to have been the object of the lad’s question. Although that particular Mr Johnson was considerably younger and taller than me. Considerably blacker as well, come to think of it.

I can see the resemblance.

Having extricated myself from the autograph hunter I found myself surrounded by a group of younger lads, maybe ten or eleven years old. After the usual “Hello, how are you? You are very handsome“ that I’m sure they learn at school as the standard greeting to people from out of town, they asked me “Do you like Suwon?“.

“Jeonbuk“ I replied, to which they laughed manically and danced around, pointing at me whilst chanting “Loser, loser“. I think I preferred the simplicity of the old days where a local would ask you the time and if your accent gave you away as a visiting supporter, he just kicked your head in.

For the journey back I waited at the bus stop that I’d used the previous week and asked the driver of the first bus if he went to Seoul. “Sadang“ he replied to my delight.

My bus.

Sadang is only ten minutes away from my apartment on the subway and with a half hour bus journey to get there I was back home an hour after the final whistle. I’ll remember that for next time I want to go to Suwon and it’s not raining.

Last Wednesday I tried a couple of new things. Firstly, I went to see South Korea play Nigeria. I’d seen the national team play against Argentina in South Africa during the World Cup but after missing their warm-up game against Ecuador a few months ago in favour of a lantern festival, this was the first time that I’d actually watched them on their home soil in front of a Korean crowd. And then, after the game, I ate my first silkworm pupae.

I’ll start with the football. Mainly because eating silkworm is more interesting and so I’ll save that until the end. Plus the football happened first, so it keeps things in the right order.

The international matches are usually played at the 68,000 capacity Seoul stadium, but for some reason this game was given to Suwon, which is a city a little south of Seoul. I’d been there before and had walked around the ancient fortress wall before watching the K-League game between Suwon and Daejeon Citizen. On that occasion it had taken me virtually all day to get to the ground, a luxury that I didn’t really have time for when I have to work until six o’clock and the game kicks off at eight.

The schedule was too tight to take on the Suwon Fortress Wall Ninjas, so we got the bus.

Luckily I had a bit of assistance in fellow Teessider Alan, who I’d gone with to the Seoul v Suwon League Cup game a couple of weeks earlier.  Alan met me at the subway station in Gangnam whilst his wife waited in the queue for our bus. It meant that twenty minutes after I’d left work bang on six o’clock, we were already on our way as the bus set off in the rush hour traffic. Normally it takes about three quarters of an hour to get to Suwon, tonight though, with the extra match traffic it was twenty to eight before we arrived.

It was quite busy outside the ground.

Fortunately Alan had already bought the tickets and so it was straight to one of the lengthy queues to get in.  It was free seating, even to the extent of which stand you chose and after abandoning our initial attempt to sit under cover at the side of the pitch, we ended up behind the goal.

It looked as if we were in the away end at first, as the only people in there appeared to be Africans, but with the free seating policy it soon filled up with Koreans as well. There wasn’t any segregation, although there were a lot of police present and the Nigerian fans mainly took up residence in the lower tier.

This was a big game for Korea, their first under new manager Cho Kwang Rae and his promised 3-4-3 formation.. Unfortunately for Lion King fans, Cho had decided not to call up Lee Dong Gook and when asked about the omission of the 85 times capped striker he was quoted as saying;

“Lee Dong-gook is a good player. But I’m looking for more of an active player with strong passing abilities,” Cho said. “If Lee improves his conditioning, there’s always a possibility that he will return to the team in the future.”

So, whilst the door wasn’t entirely closed on Lee Dong Gook,  for another long standing player it was to be a farewell appearance. Veteran goalie Lee Won Jae had decided to call it a day at thirty seven. After sitting on the bench in South Africa in what was his fourth World Cup, he had been recalled to the starting line-up for a final appearance and a presentation had been arranged at half time to mark his service and 132 cap career. It would have been even more caps had he not been suspended for a year for partying with Lee Dong Gook and a couple of other players before an Asian Cup game three years ago. Still, all that seemed forgotten as the teams lined up for the national anthems in a stadium that was probably about two thirds full, but with a lot more people still queueing outside or stuck in the traffic.

Nigerian fans during their national anthem.

Judging by the noise of the crowd, there were a lot of youngsters there and any attacking movement by South Korea was greeted by the sort of noise that I’d last heard at schoolboy internationals. There were quite a few vuvuzelas too, not enough to recreate the South Africa drone, but enough to supplement the shrieks that were heard whenever South Korea got into the Nigerian half of the pitch.

Go on, sonny, put some effort in.

Korea’s new wing back formation worked pretty well with Choi Hyo Jin  in particular getting forward at every opportunity and after a quarter of an hour Korea were in front with a very well taken goal from Yoon Bitgarem. Fifteen minutes later and it was time for retiring goalie Lee Won Jae to depart to get showered and changed for his half time retirement ceremony. Unfortunately for him, as his replacement stood waiting to come on Nigeria scored from a set piece and his last act as a player was to pick the ball out of the net. The applause as he left the field was a little muted, perhaps a consequence of the unfortunate timing as much as anything.

Lee being subbed so that he can smarten himself up for his half time presentation.

A few minutes before the break South Korea were back in front with the wingback Choi Hyo Jin making a well timed run to finish off a chance from a very cleverly placed through ball.

Half time brought the Lee Won Jae retirement show and we were treated to a lone trumpeter playing the Pet Shop Boys ’Go West’, a display of drumming and on the big screen a highlights reel of just about everything he’d ever done bar the late night drinking incident.

An emotional Lee, who was now looking very dapper in a suit and tie, made his way onto the pitch with his daughters, received a couple of presents, made a speech, hugged his goalkeeping successors  and finally, to great applause, bowed to all sides of the stadium.

Farewell to Mr Lee.

After all that the second half was a bit of an anti climax. There were plenty of substitutions but no more goals and South Korea finished up winning 2-1.

There were big queues for the buses so we decided to go for something to eat afterwards and let the crowds clear. We went into quite a small restaurant and as we sat down a couple of small dishes were placed on the table, a bit like tapas. Except that when I lived in Spain I didn’t ever get given silkworm pupae to eat.

I don't think that they will catch on in the UK.

I’d seen and smelt silkworm at some of the stalls in the street and managed to walk past without being tempted. Still, its different if they are put on a table in front of you and although I’d only had a couple of pints at the match I thought, why not? They tasted a bit like Oxo, although I’ve no idea if that is because of the seasoning or whether that is their natural taste. They were soft, not crunchy, but they weren’t filled with pus in the way that maggots are. Or at least they didnt seem to be. I just ate them one at a time and maybe had half a dozen in total.

Chopsticks seemed appropriate, I doubt I could have eaten a spoonful of them.

For the main course we had dotorimuk, which is made of acorn starch. I’d had this before at work and unlike the silkworm it’s a nightmare to eat with chopsticks.  It came with a variety of vegetables which were a little easier to handle.

We got more vegetables with ours.

We washed it down with dongdongju, which is a fermented rice wine, a bit like makkeoli but with more flavour and alcohol content. I hadn’t drank it before so it was yet another first for me in a night of new stuff. An hour or so later the crowds had cleared and we were able to easily get a bus back to Gangnam.