Tottenham Hotspur’s Son Heung-min yesterday was named in South Korea’s Asian Cup squad and coach Jurgen Klinsmann said it was “about time” they ended their 64-year continental title drought.
Wolverhampton Wanderers forward Hwang Hee-chan was also among Klinsmann’s 26-man selection for the tournament, which is to start in Qatar on Jan. 12.
Son is to captain a squad that includes Bayern Munich defender Kim Min-jae and 22-year-old Paris Saint-Germain attacking midfielder Lee Kang-in.
Photo: AFP
South Korea have not won the Asian Cup since 1960.
“It’s all about timing now and I think we are ready for this big, big competition,” Klinsmann said. “It’s 64 years — 64 years is a long time for [South] Korea. It’s about time that we get this done.”
South Korea have been drawn in Group E and face Malaysia, Jordan and Bahrain in the group stage.
They lost 1-0 to eventual champions Qatar in the quarter-finals of the 2019 Asian Cup in the United Arab Emirates.
Klinsmann, a FIFA World Cup winner with Germany in 1990, will have one of the strongest squads in the tournament in Qatar and he said he could “see it in their eyes that they are hungry for it.”
“I have a good feeling because they’re doing well at their clubs,” he said. “They’re healthy, they’re fit, they’re ambitious and they’re very hungry. This is the foundation for playing a good tournament.”
“We have a lot of different pieces in that roster and that makes us one of the favorites for the Asian Cup,” he said. “We have to fine-tune these elements over the next couple of weeks and then go into the tournament with confidence.”
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS