A futbol team cannot win a futbol game unless they score goals
Furthermore, a futbol team cannot score goals unless they take shots. Although I counted two times where Sweden’s goalkeeper actually had to move in the box, the box score in Korea’s World Cup 2018 opening loss to Sweden, credits them with zero shots on goal. ZERO.
How the fuck is it remotely possible to win a game when a team doesn’t even take a single shot? The answer is that it’s not. I’m pretty sure Sweden’s goalkeeper doesn’t even take a shower after the game and is able to meet up with whatever model of a wife/girlfriend for dinner without even having to reapply his deodorant, that’s how much of a day off today’s game was. As for his teammates, they were basically in the Royal Rumble in a game that saw over 40 fouls called, but a big fat zero for shots on goal for Korea.
Yes, I know that getting in position to even take shots on goal is like 75% of the battle in the first place, but that just exemplifies Korea’s general lack of adaptability or creativity to even bother trying anything different from what wasn’t working throughout the span of 96 minutes, to where they could even take a shot. Sweden’s defense was no slouch, but Korea wasn’t making anything harder by constantly having guys in telegraphed positions, or all the players essentially giving up once their routes were blocked.
But I’m not going to get too salty over this loss. Korean soccer hasn’t been the same since the 2002 World Cup, and even then, they had the mother of homefield advantages throughout the entire tournament. They were also coached by the legendary Guus Hiddink who was easily worth several of their wins by himself alone. They’ve been good enough to qualify for all subsequent World Cups by virtue of a globally weak Asian pool, and once they get in, they’ve regularly been exposed as a class below the usual powerhouses from Europe and South America, and have been getting bounced routinely.
It doesn’t help that they’re in the officially recognized Group of Death™ with Germany and Mexico, but I figured if there was one game in the group stage that Korea might have an opportunity to not get embarrassed in, it would’ve been against Sweden, especially with news that they’d be playing without their biggest star, Zlatan Ibrahimović.
Getting bounced from the Group of Death is expected by all for Korea, but I would really, really like to see the team at least go out with a little dignity and not go out without scoring a single goal. But at this point, I’d be simply pleased to see them actually take a fucking shot on goal, and stop with this tired Korean style of nothing but defense and trying to burn out opponents and then trying for the epic cross-field counter. If they can’t even get a single ball into the box, they’ll never even have a chance to take a shot.
The worst part about this post was that I really wanted to write about how Korea totally capitalized on an epic pre-game tactic of deliberately trying to confuse Swedish and other countries’ scouts by swapping the numbers of their players because “they have a hard time telling us apart anyway.” I mean, considering clubs all around the world seem to have the permanent green light to mock Koreans and other Asians, why the fuck shouldn’t Korea try to capitalize on the intellectual ignorance of others?
But that post was completely contingent on Korea getting a win against Sweden, because then it validates the tactic as being legit. Instead, Sweden just fouled everyone in sight just as Korea did, and by the end, everyone was probably too bruised to be able to tell each other apart anyway.
Anyway, barring any earth-shattering upsets against Germany or Mexico, and a miraculous advancement out of the Group of Death, there probably won’t be any more World Cup posts again. Unless Brazil gets completely emasculated again, to which I will gleefully take great enjoyment out of, again.
Man, and I was going to title the post “O PILSUNG COREA, MOTHERFUCKERS” too. But alas.
