D-day, the South Korean Men’s team is back with the EAFF Cup today kick off 10:00pm Korean time. It will be broadcast by Korean cable network JTBC. The first match for the Taeguk Warriors is against China. China will not being an easy opponent as they have the home advantage. Also China will be featuring their A team while we will be playing with our B team. Even though we will be playing our B team I expect a win.
Here are some statistics:
FIFA ranks South Korea 52 in the world while China is ranked 77. Our men’s team have faced China an overall 29 times, we have won them 16 times, drew 12 times and only lost once. Pretty impressive numbers, both team have won the EAFF Cup twice. South Korea in 2003 and 2008 whereas China won the EAFF Cup in 2005 and 2010.
Squad:
The Chinese National team is made up of players who all play in the national league (Chinese Super League). While the South Korea team is quite diverse, the players are from the Chinese Super League, Korean League and the Japanese League. South Korea will be also featuring a young team with the average age being 24.5 years.
Key Players:
South Korean media reports that the two key players for the China vs South Korea match will be Guangzhou Evergrande players Kim Young-Gwon and Zheng Zhi. Both players are the captains for their national team. South Korea will be looking to Kim Young-Gwon for information on the Chinese national team. Kim has scored two goals in 35 appearances with the national team. He was recently named Chinese Super League’s best eleven player.
For China Zheng Zhi will be the stand out player for the team he is a midfielder that has scored 11 goals in 52 appearances for the national team. In a recent interview by Kim Young-Gwon, he said Zheng is one of the key and best players in the Chinese national team.
Line up:
To be honest, I don’t really know who will start today against China. I don’t even know what formation we will be going for as there has been a lot of speculations. This line up has been trending among fans. So I put it in. Feel free to guess the lineup in the comment section. So the fans have being speculating we will be going for a 4-2-3-1 formation.
Prediction:
1-0 or 2-1 win for South Korea.
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