The first button of change for Suwon Samsung, which fell to the bottom of the K-League 1, is the manager’s hardship and Choi Seong-yong’s acting system.
Ahead of the ‘Super Match’ with Seoul, 스포츠토토 it was at a crossroads whether Suwon’s idea of putting in as a firefighter rather than asking the existing head coach to take responsibility would be a spark of revival or a mistake that would plunge them into a deeper abyss.
On the 18th, Suwon decided to sack coach Lee Byung-geun after just one year, taking responsibility for poor performance.
Before the rival match against 3rd place Seoul on the 22nd and the away game against 2nd place Pohang on the 25th, the replacement of the manager was ‘shock therapy’.
Suwon said, “For the time being, the team plans to lead the team with head coach Choi Seong-yong as acting manager.
However, Choi’s position has not been clearly determined. It is not a form of stepping down after the season like Christian Stellini, acting manager of Tottenham in the Premier League.
The Suwon side also has an attitude of keeping the door open and watching Choi’s leadership. Unlike the Premier League, K League 1 is now in the early stages of the season, so it is difficult to set a deadline.
Coach Choi is a so-called ‘half blue’ case who came in and out of the club while playing and coaching in Suwon.
Coach Choi, who was born in 1973 and is 50 years old, began his professional career with Vissel Kobe in Japan. Then, he advanced to Europe through LASK Linz in Austria, and after enjoying the legend of the semifinals together as part of the 2002 World Cup Korea-Japan entry, he joined Suwon in the same year and played until 2005. He later played for the J-League and Ulsan before retiring in 2010.
His coaching career was also mixed half and half between Suwon and other clubs. He first coached in Gangwon, then taught players in Suwon from 2013 to 2018 under former coach Seo Jeong-won.
After former coach Seo left Suwon, he followed coach Choi Kang-hee to Dalian, China, and Shenhua, Shanghai, for nearly three years, and worked as Suwon’s head coach for one year with Lee’s appointment last year.
It is true that I am in a situation where I have to supervise based on my age and career because I have stepped into the leadership life step by step. He played 65 A matches and played quite a bit as a top-class player in Korean soccer in his own way. He has experienced both the Olympics and the World Cup.
He was excellent defensively during his active career, such as tying Masaki Yo Maezono and Hide Nakata, who were the leading attacking resources of Japanese football in the 1990s, and is also a player well known to football fans at the time.
However, it is inevitable to question whether he is suitable for being put in as a firefighter, especially in a situation where his managerial career has fallen to the bottom of the team.
This is because the soccer community evaluated that the concentration and cohesiveness of the Suwon team during Lee’s coaching period were poor. It can also be interpreted as saying that the coaching staff had difficulties in controlling the team, raising questions about how much Choi, who was under coach Lee, could take care of the players and move forward.
Fans and media, watching the resignation of manager Lee, strongly raised the theory of responsibility for the current Suwon club front, pointing out the situation where the club, which once commanded Asia, was on the verge of falling to the second division.
However, if coach Choi performs decently in the early days of his appointment, criticism of the parent company Samsung’s indifference and rumors of resignation from the front office following years of consecutive sluggishness may fade away again.
This is why the ‘Choi Seong-yong system’ can be called an adventure in front of a cliff.