▲ The Korean national football team, including coach Paulo Bento, who finished the 2022 East Asian Football Federation E-1 Championship (East Asian Cup) held in Japan, is returning home through Incheon International Airport Terminal 2 on the afternoon of the 28th. 2022.7.28 ⓒ Yonhap News
It is expected that the path for Korean football to the World Cup will become easier in the future. However, being comfortable does not necessarily coincide with the meaning of ‘getting better’. This is because the easier it is to pass the qualifiers, the less valuable it will be, while the demand for performance in the finals will be higher.
FIFA has decided to increase the number of participating countries from 32 to 48 from the 2026 America’s World Cup, which will be held jointly in Canada, Mexico and the United States. The number of tickets to qualify for the World Cup given to Asia will nearly double from 4.5 to 8.5.
Here, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) unveiled a new method of qualifying for the Asian World Cup that will be applied from the next tournament on the 1st. The Asian qualifier starts with the first qualifier, in which the 22 teams ranked 26th to 47th in the FIFA rankings in Asia face off in a home-and-away format to determine 11 teams.
Korea will participate in the second qualifying round in which Asian teams ranked 1st to 25th will participate. The 36 teams will be divided into 9 groups of 4 teams each, going through a group stage (home and away), and the top two teams from each group will advance to the final qualifiers and qualify for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup finals. In the final qualifying round, a total of 18 teams are divided into three groups and competed, with the 1st and 2nd places in each group going directly to the World Cup, and the 3rd and 4th places getting another chance through the playoffs.
Korea is a regular customer who has already advanced to the finals 10 times in a row, from the 1986 Mexico Games to the 2022 Qatar World Cup. The most appearances in Asia (11 times) and double-digit consecutive appearances in world football are Brazil (22 times), Germany (18 times), Italy (14 times), Argentina (13 times), Spain (12 times), etc. followed by the sixth In addition, the expansion of the World Cup participating countries and the change in the qualifying method means that the path to the World Cup finals is actually wider for Asian traditional soccer powerhouses such as Korea.
Compared to Europe or South America, Asia does not have many football powerhouses. There are so many participating countries like Africa, and the power between the teams is leveled, so there are not many variables. Recently, Korea, Japan, Iran, and Australia have successfully advanced to the finals without any abnormalities in recent competitions, and traditional powerhouses have a prominent monopoly on finals tickets.
As the qualifying process has been changed, it is likely that strong teams such as Korea will compete for the ‘top seed’ in the FIFA rankings. If you enter the top seed, the chances of meeting in the same group as Iran, Japan and Australia in the final qualifier are reduced that much. Experts analyze that even if they do not get the top seed, the chances of Korea being pushed to third place or lower are not high, as the strong teams are dispersed as the final qualifying rounds are increased to three groups. Even if we assume the worst case scenario, if we finish in the top 4, we have the last chance of a playoff.
Of course, there is no guarantee that change will only be beneficial to Korea. If they are assigned to the same group as a team that fell to the top seed among the so-called Asian semifinals, such as Korea, Iran, Japan, and Australia, a ‘group of death’ can be created. Korea has traditionally been exceptionally weak against Iran, which they have often met in World Cup qualifiers, and looking at their A-match records over the past 10 years, they are also inferior to rival Japan with 2 wins, 1 draw and 4 losses. Australia, who plays European football, has not yet met in the World Cup qualifiers after joining the AFC.
Here, there are dark horses who have bullied Korean football several times in Sangseong, apart from differences in power, such as Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and Qatar. Considering that there are clear signs of upward leveling in Asian football as well, it is not a situation to be unconditionally optimistic that the door to the World Cup has widened.
In addition, regardless of whether Korean soccer advances to the World Cup finals, what soccer fans are concerned about is the quality deterioration of the World Cup level due to weakened competitiveness. There are also positive prospects that if the scope of participation is greatly expanded in Asia, where the difference in power between teams is still large, it can be a new motivation for low-middle-class teams such as China, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan, who have not had a chance to step on the World Cup stage because of traditional powerhouses.
However, it is pointed out that if teams with lower quality come up due to the expansion of the World Cup, the competitive structure will naturally fade and the tension may be reduced by half. The chance to see matches such as the Korea-Japan match, which is considered the biggest match between Asian rivals, and the Korea-Iran match, in the World Cup qualifiers will be reduced by that much.
Already, in a situation where Asian teams do not have many opportunities to interact with powerhouses from other continents other than the World Cup, if competition with strong teams in the region disappears, it could be a negative for the national team’s strength and the success of the A-match. In addition, there is a possibility that a one-sided match with a large score difference or a tie-up may occur one after another when they meet with Asian 2-3-class teams in the World Cup finals, where a large number of European-South American champions appear.
Above all, the true meaning of the change in the World Cup method for Korean football means that expectations for the ‘final results’ are higher. As Korean football has already become a regular customer of the World Cup, the meaning of ‘passing the preliminaries’ itself has diminished long before the discussion of expanding the participating countries to 48 countries.
In the past, just participating in the World Cup was recognized as a great achievement, but as the experience of the finals increased, the level of expectations of the fans gradually increased. Now, I have become accustomed to looking at the World Cup finals as ‘the stage to go on’ and the preliminary rounds as ‘the process to go through for the finals’. Coach Huh Jeong-moo, who led the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, passed the final qualifying round undefeated and achieved the first away round of 16 in the finals, but some fans said that the performance was not as good as expected and was devalued.
As the road becomes wider and more comfortable, raising the eyes may be a natural phenomenon. From now on, no matter how well Korean football passes the World Cup qualifiers, it will be difficult to get recognition if it does not perform satisfactorily in the finals.
In addition, it is necessary to consider a new direction for the management of the national team’s FIFA rankings and the association’s business marketing made through the A match results. For Korean football, not only the flower road awaits, but it is the time to prepare and prepare for a new challenge that will never be easy.
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