Seongnam IFC Away - The Must-Read Blog of the Year!

Following our trip to the Korean War Museum, Lon, Lisa, and I hopped on the subway to meet Josh for the Seongnam IFC vs Daejeon Citizen game. We were looking forward to this for several reasons. First, Seongnam is the most successful team in K-League history, and Daejeon hadn't beaten them for five years. DCFC has been looking much better since we brought in a new coach so we had high hopes. Secondly, like the Washington Times, Seongnam is owned by the Unification Church of convicted tax fraud Sun Myung Moon, and any chance to stick it to the self-proclaimed Second Coming of Christ is welcome.

The third reason is personal. Seongnam have in their back line a fat, talentless thug named Saša Ognenovski, who should be arrested for impersonating a footballer. A brief look at his stats (ranging from 1-20) in Football Manager will tell you what he's all about - note that "Aggression" is his best attribute. And I think they made an error - that weight should read "209 kilograms."

We've seen him play in a couple of games in Daejeon, and he's a complete d***. His "preferred moves" in Football Manager should include "kicks the ball aimlessly out of bounds" and "fouls people for no good reason." We could tell he was a foreigner, but what we didn't know is that he's Australian and can therefore understand English. This would probably explain why he once grabbed his crotch in our direction in response to a torrent of abuse after he elbowed one of our players in the face in the box. Not very professional, Saša.

Josh was kind enough to pick us up from the Subway and drive us to the stadium. Or at least we thought it was the stadium. It turns out that Seongnam actually has two stadiums, and we were at the wrong one, partly due to the fact that the Moonies saw fit to put up Seongnam vs. Daejeon banners at the wrong stadium. You'd think their Messiah wouldn't let them do something so stupid. As a result, we arrived about 10 minutes late to the crappiest stadium I've ever seen. They may be successful, but their stadium sucks and their support is pathetic (look at the bleachers near the top . . . our supporters are in the foreground).

Daejeon looked very good in the first half, even without Ko Chang-Hyun who was on the subs bench due to a recent injury. We were rewarded just before half-time when left-back Kim Han-Seob scored an excellent goal. I'm guessing it was his first for the club given the fact that he was mobbed by his teammates . . . or perhaps they just hate right-wing cults as much as I do. Things got even better after half-time, when Daejeon's new Serbian striker Stevan Račić rounded the keeper, only to be pulled down just outside the area. The Seongnam keeper saw red, while all eyes turned to free-kick God Ko Chang-Hyun who was warming up. He came on for Stevan, and with his first kick since returning from injury scored another trademark curling free-kick. How we love him so!

A comfortable victory just isn't DCFC's style though. Shortly after 10-man Seongnam pulled one back with a good header and it was nail-biting time. We were perhaps somewhat fortunate that Saša kept kicking useless long-balls as usual. The referee added an inexplicable five minutes of injury time, during which Choi Eun-Sung pulled off a very good save to keep us in the lead. When the final whistle was blown, the Daejeon fans erupted, and I've never seen the players so happy.

We said goodbye to Josh and caught the Supporter's Bus back to Daejeon. I started to drift off to sleep, only to wake up a half-hour later at a rest stop. It seemed relatively soon for a break and I was not pleased at being awoken from my nap, but my spirits were lifted when I saw what looked like the team bus. And indeed, once inside, we got to meet a number of the players, including Stevan (see below), the Brazilian duo Valber and Alexandre, and even Ko Chang-Hyun. New manager (and miracle worker) Wang Sun-Jae offered to buy all of the supporters ramen, and even asked me "Where are you prom?"

The highlight, by far though, was meeting captain and legend Choi Eun-Sung. He's been at Daejeon since the team started in 1997, and he is worshipped by the fans. We had the pleasure of attending his 400th game for DCFC earlier in the season. He was extremely nice and gladly agreed to take a picture with us . . . only for Lon's camera to run out of batteries. We were able to get just enough juice to snap the below picture though, capping off an undoubted highlight of my 9 months in Korea.

Link to Liam's match report.