[데일리굿뉴스] Correspondent Choi Sang-kyung = The World Cup in Qatar, which is just two days away from the opening, is also an arena for Korean soccer to break various records set in previous tournaments.
On the 19th, the Korea Football Association organized the records of Korean football that Bentoho challenges.
The first ‘limit’ of Korean football that Bentoho must break is the record against the South American team.
Korean football has never beaten a South American team in the World Cup.
Since their first participation in the World Cup in Switzerland in 1954, Korea has played 34 matches in the World Cup stage and won six times.
They won 5 wins against European teams and 1 win against African teams, but never won against South American and North and Central American teams. They are inferior with 2 draws and 6 losses.
If they win against Uruguay scheduled for 10:00 pm on the 24th, it will be the first victory against a South American team.
If he catches this game, he will be on an advantage in advancing to the round of 16, which is Bento’s immediate task.
Coincidentally, the most recent match against a South American team was the round of 16 match against Uruguay in the 2010 South Africa tournament.
At that time, the national team lost 1-2, conceding multiple goals to Uruguayan striker Luis Suárez, who had emerged as a god.
Korean soccer has never won the second round of the World Cup group stage.
Out of the six victories won in the World Cup so far, only the first match in the group stage has three wins. 2 wins in the 3rd game, 1 win in the round of 16.
Bentoho’s opponent in the second leg of the group stage is Ghana. As Ghana is evaluated as weak compared to Uruguay and Portugal, which are one step ahead of Korea, it is also a ‘one-win opponent’ that must be caught to advance to the round of 16.
If they beat both Uruguay and Ghana, they will become the first team to win three World Cups in a row.
As the 2-0 win against Germany in the third round of the group stage of the 2018 Russia tournament was the last World Cup match for Korean soccer, they can continue their winning streak in this tournament.
In the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, which advanced to the semifinals, they defeated Portugal (1-0) and Italy (2-1) one after another, and defeated Spain after a close match in the quarterfinals, but the match was decided by penalty shootout, so the official record remained as a draw.
In addition, it is noteworthy whether the World Cup ‘more than one goal per game’ will be achieved.
Since the 1954 Swiss tournament, Korea has scored exactly 34 goals in 34 matches.
If you score more goals than the number of matches in this competition, the average goal will exceed 1 goal for the first time in 68 years.
To do this, as they have to score 4 goals in 3 group stage games, attention is focused on the toes of the attacking team of Bentoho, with Son Heung-min (30, Tottenham) at the forefront.
If Son Heung-min plays an active role, he could become the main character of a ‘World Cup multi-goal’ that has not yet been achieved in Korean football.
In the 2018 Russia tournament, Son Heung-min started scoring in succession against Mexico and Germany in the group stage, but never scored two goals in one game.
Two games in a row without a goal is also a long-awaited record. South Korea conceded a whopping 70 goals in 34 matches.
Among them, the games that ended without a goal were 6 games, including the match against Germany in the 2018 Russia tournament, but two consecutive games have not yet been scored. This is a task that can be accomplished by a defense team led by Kim Min-jae (26, Naples).