[스포츠한국 이재호 기자] Son Heung-min scored Korea’s second goal in the match against Colombia on the 24th with a direct free kick. With this goal, Son Heung-min surpassed Ha Seok-joo and became the protagonist with the most direct free kick goals (5 goals) in Korean A-match history.
There is a hidden secret to Son Heung-min’s free-kick scoring that all the Korean national team players collaborated with.
The March A match evaluation match against Colombia held in Ulsan on the 24th. This match, which was manager Jurgen Klinsmann’s debut match, ended in a 2-2 draw as Son Heung-min scored two goals in the first half, but conceded two goals at the start of the second half.
Son Heung-min’s goal in the first half of extra time was a free kick goal. Even though there was a distance of about 25m from the goal post, the ball kicked by Son Heung-min was put right in the corner, and the Colombian goalkeeper couldn’t help it.
Son Heung-min scored his first free kick goal against Myanmar in the World Cup qualifiers in June 2015, then scored against Chile and Paraguay in a friendly match in June last year, and against Costa Rica in a friendly match in September, then scored another free kick this time.
With this, Son Heung-min became the player who scored the most direct free kicks in Korean A-match history, surpassing Ha Seok-joo’s 4 goals.
Looking at Son Heung-min’s free kick scoring record, he has scored four goals since last year, seven years after his first goal against Myanmar in 2015. He scored four goals from free kicks in nine months.
Son Heung-min’s kick is so good that he was able to score so many free kick goals in a short period of time, but it can be found in the national team’s free kick tactics.
Since the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the national team can see two or three players standing in front of the defensive wall or sitting on one knee when aiming for a direct free kick close to the goal. In this case, the ball that was originally visible through the defensive walls in the goalkeeper’s field of view becomes invisible due to the Korean players.
It is to steal the timing by giving confusion to the goalkeeper while hiding the timing of the free kick. The goalkeeper doesn’t know when the ball will come flying, and he can’t know the exact timing. By the time the ball floats and goes over the defensive wall, he has kicked the ball, and he knows where he is coming from, and when this happens, the reaction is bound to be delayed.
In other words, for Son Heung-min’s direct free kick, two or three players in front of him steal the timing by covering the goalkeeper’s view in front of a defensive wall that may seem meaningless.
Except for the goal against Myanmar eight years ago, Son Heung-min’s four free-kick goals scored in the last nine months all came from this detailed free-kick tactic.
Of course, only the goalkeeper knows how effective it is to have several players standing in front of the defensive wall in practice, but when this method was successful, the national team players did this every time they had a direct free kick opportunity.
Not only when Son Heung-min kicked, but also when Lee Gi-je took a free kick shot with his left foot in the 40th minute of the first half, the same two players knelt down and obstructed the goalkeeper’s view.
Of course, the kicking power of the kicker is the most important in scoring from a free kick. However, thanks to the efforts of the team members to steal the timing even a little and confuse the goalkeeper, Son Heung-min was able to become the highest free kick goal scorer in Korean soccer history with a tremendous pace of 4 free kick goals in 9 months.