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| A match between Iran and Japan in the quarterfinals of the 2023 Asian Football Confederation Qatar Asian Cup at Alaiyan Education City Stadium in Qatar on the 3rd (local time). Chinese referee Manning is warning Japan's Itakura. Alaiyan (Qatar) = Reporter Park Jae-man pjm@sportschosun.com /2024.02.03/ |
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| South Korean referee Kim Jong-hyuk. Photo courtesy = Korea Football Association |
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The future of the Korean soccer referees is still dark.
FIFA did not have the name of a Korean referee on the list of referees released on the 15th (local time). FIFA will deploy 117 referees from 41 countries to the Club World Cup, which will be held in 11 U.S. cities from June 14 to July 13. There are 35 referees, 58 assistant referees, and 24 video review referees. Among the countries belonging to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), China (Manning, Puming), Qatar (Salman Palahi, Ramzan Al-Naemi, Majid Al-Shammari), the United Arab Emirates (Omar Al-Ali, Mohammed Obaid Kalpan), and Uzbekistan (Iliz Tantashev, Timur Gainulin, and Andrey Trzapenko) produced Club World Cup referees.
According to the domestic referee community, the exclusion of 'K-Referee's Club World Cup roster is foreseen. The elders of the judging circle said, `It is not just a matter of individual ability but also a matter of politics to produce referees to international competitions. It is important how much the Korean Football Association (KFA) can speak out within AFC and FIFA. The influence of the Korea Football Association (KFA) in the AFC is gradually decreasing. Sheikh Salman van Ibrahim Al Khalifa, from Bahrain, was appointed as AFC president in 2013 and has held the position of AFC head for 12 years. From 2011 to 2023, three of the four Asian Cups were held in the Middle East. The 2022 World Cup was held in Qatar, and the 2034 World Cup was held in Saudi Arabia. The Middle East has shifted its focus of Asian soccer to the Middle East based on its strong financial power. Naturally, judges from the Middle East, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, began to appear at international competitions. The referee of the 2023 Asian Cup final was Chinese Manning. KFA Chairman Chung Mong-kyu served as the chairman of the AFC's referee committee from 2016 to 2020, but ironically, the Korean referee took a back seat. The current chairman of the AFC Judgment Commission is Hani Balan who is from Qatar.
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| 2025 FIFA Club World Cup allocation umpires list. |
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| Deputy referee Jeong Hae-sang participated in the 2010 South Africa World Cup. Sports Chosun DB |
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South Korea has never produced a referee at a major tournament while the strong mountain has changed once. Deputy referee Park Hae-yong of the 1994 U.S. World Cup, Vice referee Jeon Young-hyun of the 1998 World Cup in France, referee Kim Young-joo of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, vice referee Kim Dae-young of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and vice referee Jung Hae-sang of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa have solidified the status of South Korean referees through five consecutive World Cups. However, it was behind the judges of Japan, Australia, and Uzbekistan since the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Feeling a sense of crisis, KFA operated the 'World Cup Referee Production Project' for the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar after the World Cup in Brazil. By combining the appropriate age, referee evaluation score, physical strength, and foreign language proficiency, six referees, including Kim Jong-hyuk (main referee), Jung Hae-yeol (main referee), Yoon Kwang-yeol (main referee), Kim Sang-woo (main referee), Choi Min-byung and Yang Byung-eun (Group 2) were intensively managed. However, the project failed to come to fruition. It is widely believed in the soccer community that there is a high possibility that South Korean referees will not be assigned to the 2026 North Korea-China World Cup next summer. The Asian referees, who played in this Club World Cup, are likely to play in the World Cup a year later.
Where does the problem start? Rather than looking out the door, you should look at the door first. Gwangju coach Lee Jung-hyo was suspended for two games after being sent off for kicking a water bottle against Daejeon last month. Section 12 of the KFA Rules (Foul and Tort) (3) of the "Disciplinary Measures" stipulates that "the act of throwing or kicking a beverage bottle or other object" is "Warning", but the referee violated the rules at the time. There was also a violation of the rules that issued a warning to the wrong player and canceled the warning after operating the video reading system (VAR). This kind of thing happens frequently. The allocation of judges and evaluation of judges by the KFA Judgment Committee are conducted in secret in the dark room. There are also suspicions that a specific referee team has been deployed several times to save a specific team. The misjudgment also moves on with a 'shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh'. On top of that, Chairman Moon Jin-hee, the new chairman of the judgment committee of Chung Mong-gyu's fourth term, was re-examined by a media report that he had a drinking party with a female referee in the past when he had to walk the 'judgment reform drive'.
Chairman Chung Mong-gyu, who succeeded in his fourth term, pledged to support referees. The main points are support for fostering international referees, implementing educational programs, and realizing referee allowances. It is time to put our heads together with Chairman Moon to take the lead in normalizing the judging world. There are a lot of problems to be solved, including breaking down the bad practice of `control' on-site referees with evaluation scores that are directly related to the right to allocate games and the promotion system, fostering a wide range of referee talent, strengthening consistency and transparency in referee decisions, fair referee allocation and fair referee evaluation, and finding new international referees. At the same time, the influence of Korean referees in the AFC should be expanded again by fully utilizing the existing talent pool. Judges say in unison that Chinese referee Manning is superior to referee Kim Jong-hyuk and is not whistling in important matches in recent international competitions.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
