Monday, August 24, 2009

South Korea wants 2022 World Cup.

From the Chosun Ilbo:
Korea has joined the bid for the 2022 World Cup with former foreign minister Han Seung-joo named as the chairman of the bid committee.

Korea has joined in the final rush of countries hoping to host the event. Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands-Belgium, Russia, Spain-Portugal and the U.S. have filed to host both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups while Qatar and Korea bid for 2022 only.

Right now the United States is viewed as a top candidate for 2022, but Han and members of the committee plan to change all that. Korea hosted the 2002 World Cup jointly with Japan and this time will bid for the sole hosting rights.

A little more from the LA Times:
The U.S., Australia, England, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and Russia have formally declared their desire to host the World Cup in either 2018 or 2022. The Netherlands-Belgium and Portugal-Spain have each submitted shared bids for both those tournaments. And South Korea and Qatar have also applied as candidates to host only the 2022 World Cup.

I'll let soccer fans chime in here with more details, but if I'm not mistaken, the Korean fans' enthusiasm for their national team aside, attendance and interest was poor both here and Japan. Korea came away with tons of new stadiums, yet they sit mostly unused today. I guess they'll need another World Cup to justify building so many World Cup Stadiums.

18 comments:

This Is Me Posting said...

The stadiums in the 2002 World Cup were beautiful, but I would never, ever want Korea to host the World Cup again since it would mean that their team is automagically eligible to play.

Most World Cup fans are still furious about Korea's cheating in 2002, which pretty much ruined the whole event.

I, for one, am just barely getting over it now.

nb said...

I was here during the 2002 World Cup as well as the 2006 World Cup. I must say that it was a blast in 2002! Great fun. The Koreans are all kinds of annoying as soccer fans with all the chanting and screaming, but I saw absoulutely no violence anyway. It was a great big happy party and everyone was having fun.
The 2006 World Cup made me sick and hatefull. I games were in Germany, so they came on in the middle of the night. I was living in a large dog box apartment surrounded by 5 other dog box apartment and across the street from another set of dog box apartments. The Koreans were chanting loudly, screaming, and cheering in the middle of the night. Like 2am or 4am. It was impossible to sleep and I am not insane, so I didnt wake up to watch the games.
During the Swiss game, it got really quiet at one point and I was able to fall asleep. Every foreigner I talked to that day was red eyed from lack of sleep and grateful that the Swiss team won.
Who the F#@k chants, sings, cheers loudly in the middle of the night? Oh yah...Koreans.

nb said...

I had never before seen a player get a yellow card for holding before I saw the Korean team in the World Cup. Does anyone see yellow cards for holding in the Premier League?

DSW said...

The problem with this is that Koreans cheat mercilessly... Look at schools, businesses and government. Hell, look around you in a supermarket. They cut corners, pull you back... Whatever it takes to win, regardless of rules.

Look at the 2002 World Cup - Korea pulled off the least convincing act of cheatery at a World Cup by beating Italy. Go to YouTube and watch what will make your justice gland swell up and explode.

Korea should be banned from competing in, and hosting, all major sporting events until they can prove themselves capable of civilised competition.

This Is Me Posting said...

@KRD

You know, I remembered it was bad, but I needed a reminder of just how absolutely awful they were.

I was LIVID with the calls against Spain, but Italy was freakin' terrible as well.

Korea should get a permanent ban from the World Cup until they learn how to actually play football instead of wrestling. Bunch of savages.

Darth Babaganoosh said...

Korea will not get the Cup again in the near future.

With the exception of the Korea matches, the others were sparsely attended and tickets were being given away at the gates.

And Korea only had HALF of the games. If they had hosted 100% of the games, it would have been an even larger disaster.

If they give it to Asia to host again, it won't be to a country who (1) already had it in recent memory and (2) couldn't rustle up enough fans to make half the games successful/profitable.

chuck said...

i was here in 2002, went to 12 matches including the opening match between france and senegal which i was able to buy from fifa 2 days before the match and was utterly shocked at the lack of attendance at the games, the opener had i'd say 4000 empty seats around me, most of the other matches were half full and i remember middle school and hs students walking in after the games started to fill in the seats

only matches were the crowd was close to capacity i went to were us-korea, brazil-costa rica and korea-italy. in fact i was able to buy midfield seats for us-mexico outside the stadium for 30,000 won!!

no way korea ever hosts one again my bet is the us will get one of those and europe the other 2026 will come to asia

oh yeah after rewatching the video of the italy game some of the calls were very quetionable, spain was an act of robbery no doubt

brent said...

I watch almost every Korean national team game. The FIFA refereeing for matches in Asia seems far different than for Europe and the Premier League. The play is much rougher usually. Watch some games with China and North Korea and they are just "hacking" out there. I don't think you can blame the country for that- you need to take that beef to FIFA and the refs.

baekgom84 said...

Um... sympathy for the Italians in the World Cup? Some people must really, really hate Korea. The Italians getting knocked out was the single greatest moment of 2002. There are always dodgy games in the WC and the benefit of the doubt usually goes to the host nation, if they are playing. I don't see how you can blame Korea for shite referees, and if you're suggesting that money was paid under the table, I'm pretty sure that the Italians wrote the book on that.

This Is Me Posting said...

@baekgom84

Did you even watch the games? The single greatest moment of the 2002 WC was when South Korea FINALLY got their asses thrown out of the tournament.

As for paid refs, after watching the Spain/Korea game, there's pretty much no doubt from anyone around the world that Korea bought its refs. 2 legal goals called back? Please tell me again that Korea didn't cheat. Go ahead. I could use another laugh. The only people who don't believe the Koreans cheated/bought their refs are Koreans. Fancy that.

@brent

I do blame the refs. They were clearly bought. NO ONE would be able to get away with playing the way the Koreans played. There's a reason that Korea's never made the World Cup on its own merit: They're a terrible team that didn't deserve to be playing at this level.

baekgom84 said...

No-one would disupte that the Korean team definitely rode their luck on the way to the semi-final. But accusations of cheating smacks of sour grapes. A handful of dodgy decisions aren't going to take your team to the semi-finals.

But if you're still convinced that cheating goes on in the World Cup, look no further than the round of 16 match between Italy and Australia in 2006. In fact, Australia was the victim of multiple horrific refereeing decisions throughout the tournament, not least of which was the match against Croatia where a player was yellow-carded three times and Viduka got literally hauled to the ground two, maybe three times in the penalty box. Nobody suggested that anyone was cheating. We manned up and got over it.

3gyupsal said...

@This is me posting. The refs weren't calling the game well, but Italy is also quite notorious for taking dives, and in your video an Italian dude has a Korean guy brush his foot against the Italian's thigh, the Italian then falls down and stands up holding his groin.

On the other hand a Korean dude kicked another guy in the head and didn't get much of a call for it.

That said Korea definatly does have a reputation for cheating, they will have a hard time living down their reputation for this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdzVSMFpm6w

YourAverageGhost said...

FIFA World Cup = bunch of corrupted idiots running the show since the 1980s

See other corrupted organization: IOC

I haven't watched TV sports show since 1999!

bingbing said...

@Baekgom

Not going to comment on the 2002 World Cup other than it was amazing to be in Korea at that time.

As for how Korea played, why hasn't anyone mentioned Hiddink?

Anyway. That bullshit penalty against Australia in the Italy match 2006 was an absolute crock.

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andrew1 said...

I wonder how many people that say Korea 'cheated' against Italy actually watched the full game. I love it when people complain about the disallowed goal. Calling it a 'disallowed' goal is a massive stretch, considering that the Italian player continued playing long after the whistle and all the other players had stopped, and then tapped it into the net, which is usually a yellow card offence. Also, if you actually look at the replays, the offside decision was a hard one to make, it was a 50:50 call that could have gone either way. Many teams have been screwed over by much more obvious wrong offside calls, but they were never accused of cheating.

Another supposedly bad call was Korea's early penalty (which they missed) , yet the people who say this quite clearly did not actually see the incident, or are lying, because two Korean players were bought down in the penalty box. If that isn't a penalty, what it? It was certainly a better call then the one that gifted Italy the winning goal against Australia in 2006, yet Italy was never accused of cheating.

The next blatantly obvious piece of cheating (sarcasm) was when Totti was fouled in the Korean penalty box and should have earned Italy a penalty but instead was given a red card. In fact, Totti was not fouled, but it was a clean tackle. Also, the people who never actually watched the game/Italians seem to forget that it was only a second yellow card, and Totti was extremely fortunate not to have been sent off for a second offence various times earlier in the game with his Hollywood antics, including an incident a few minutes before the red card where he fell to the ground clutching his face in agony after a Korean players elbow lightly brushed against his chest.

Korea deserved to win that game anyway. For most of the game they were playing better football, and Italy played negative anti football after scoring their first goal. They didn't attack at all, and their manager only added to this with his defensive substitutions. Not to mention the sitter that Vieri missed- an open goal right in front of him with no defenders or goalkeepers in sight. My dog could have scored that. It makes you wonder, if Korea really paid off the referee why did they leave so much to luck? The answer is because they didn't, only people have brainwashed you to believe it.Because if you believe Italy were cheated then you are almost certainly either highly biased, or haven't actually watched the full game.

andrew1 said...

I wonder how many people that say Korea 'cheated' against Italy actually watched the full game. I love it when people complain about the disallowed goal. Calling it a 'disallowed' goal is a massive stretch, considering that the Italian player continued playing long after the whistle and all the other players had stopped, and then tapped it into the net, which is usually a yellow card offence. Also, if you actually look at the replays, the offside decision was a hard one to make, it was a 50:50 call that could have gone either way. Many teams have been screwed over by much more obvious wrong offside calls, but they were never accused of cheating.

The next blatantly obvious piece of cheating (sarcasm) was when Totti was fouled in the Korean penalty box and should have earned Italy a penalty but instead was given a red card. In fact, Totti was not fouled, but it was a clean tackle. Also, the people who never actually watched the game/Italians seem to forget that it was only a second yellow card, and Totti was extremely fortunate not to have been sent off for a second offence various times earlier in the game with his Hollywood antics, including an incident a few minutes before the red card where he fell to the ground clutching his face in agony after a Korean players elbow lightly brushed against his chest.

Korea deserved to win that game anyway. For most of the game they were playing better football, and Italy played negative anti football after scoring their first goal. They didn't attack at all, and their manager only added to this with his defensive substitutions. Not to mention the sitter that Vieri missed- an open goal right in front of him with no defenders or goalkeepers in sight. My dog could have scored that. It makes you wonder, if Korea really paid off the referee why did they leave so much to luck? The answer is because they didn't, only people have brainwashed you to believe it.Because if you believe Italy were cheated then you are almost certainly either highly biased, or haven't actually watched the full game.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddUKHMLAckE

This proves your comments wrong, Andrew.