SEOUL, A senior South Korean football official will interview a pair of former Premier League coaches this week in a continued search to fill the vacancy for the men’s national team, the sport’s national governing body said Tuesday.
The Korea Football Association (KFA) said its technical director, Lee Lim-saeng, departed for Europe earlier in the day for interviews. KFA officials confirmed an earlier report that Lee will meet with former Sunderland and Greece national team head coach Gus Poyet and ex-Huddersfield Town boss David Wagner.
Lee has been put in charge of the coaching search, which has dragged on for nearly five months, after Chung Hae-sung resigned as head of the KFA’s National Teams Committee over the weekend.
Chung had been responsible for identifying and interviewing candidates, but while Chung and his committee members had been pushing for a South Korean candidate, the KFA’s senior management is believed to have been in favor of a foreign-born tactician. After Chung left, several members o
f his committee followed suit.
Poyet, 56, became the first Uruguayan to manage in the Premier League when he took the Sunderland job in 2013. He had previously coached Brighton and Hove Albion in the second division in England.
Poyet also had coaching stops in Greece, Spain, China, France and Chile. He most recently coached the Greek national team from 2022 to earlier this year.
Wagner, a 52-year-old from Germany, spent parts of the past two years coaching Norwich City in the second-tier competition in England. He first made a name for himself as coach when he secured Premier League promotion for Huddersfield Town for the 2017-2018 season and kept them there for one season. He has also worked in Switzerland and Germany.
The KFA brass is also said to be interested in current Australian national team head coach Graham Arnold, after former South Korea head coach Guus Hiddink recommended the Australian tactician.
The South Korean men’s team has been without a head coach since the KFA fired Jurgen Klinsmann o
n Feb. 16, in light of the country’s elimination in the semifinals of the Asian Football Confederation Asian Cup. South Korea played their final four matches in the second round of the Asian World Cup qualifying tournament — two in March and two in June — under two caretaker managers, Hwang Sun-hong and Kim Do-hoon.
Hwang, former head coach of the men’s under-23 national team, has since taken over Daejeon Hana Citizen in the K League 1. Kim said he was offered the full-time job after his temporary stint ended in June but turned it down because he felt he was better suited for a club job.
Another South Korean-born coach believed to be in the running, Ulsan HD FC head coach Hong Myung-bo, has also spurned the KFA’s offer.
The third round of the World Cup qualification campaign will kick off in September. South Korea will face Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Palestine and Kuwait in Group B.
Source: Yonhap News Agency