Incheon: South Korea head coach Hong Myung-bo claimed Thursday he has never lost faith in Son Heung-min, despite signs of declining skills for the longtime national football team captain. "Son Heung-min is the heart of our team, and I have never once doubted that," Hong told reporters at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, after arriving home from a two-match European trip.
According to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea lost to Ivory Coast 4-0 last Saturday near London before getting blanked 1-0 by Austria in Vienna on Tuesday. Following these back-to-back losses, South Korea dropped three spots to No. 25 in the latest FIFA rankings released earlier Thursday. Son, who was under the weather when he joined the national team camp in late March, was subbed on in the second half of the Ivory Coast match but failed to make any impact. He got the start against Austria but missed a few scoring chances before being taken out late in the second half.
Son has not yet scored an open-play goal for Los Angeles Football Club in nine matches this season. Son, 33, pushed back against the narrative that he had hit the downslope of his career with the World Cup fast approaching. Hong also stood by the veteran Thursday. "I tried to monitor his minutes because he was battling a cold when he first reported to camp," Hong said. "As far as I am concerned, Son Heung-min has been doing a superb job as captain and one of the veteran players."
The two recent matches were the last ones for South Korea before Hong finalizes his World Cup squad. There will be one last FIFA international match window in the first week of June before the World Cup kicks off on June 11. "We've finished our experiments in terms of our positional balance and player combinations," Hong said. "Our tactics are almost set. We have to finish our player selection by mid-May, and we will watch K League matches closely and analyze our data to pick the players that we think will perform well at the World Cup."
As for key takeaways from the two losses, Hong said, "I was reminded once again that we cannot afford to give up the first goal at the World Cup." In the Ivory Coast match in particular, South Korean players struggled to find their rhythm after the "hydration break" in the first half. This year's World Cup will feature the mandatory water breaks, regardless of temperature, at around the 22nd minute of each half. These stoppages are in place to help players combat humid conditions in North America and to allow broadcasters to show commercials.
Coaches would be wise to use these breaks as conventional timeouts in basketball, but Hong said his players confronted some physical challenges from the unfamiliar stoppage in play. "We confirmed through data that our players' high-intensity performance capacity suffered a great deal after the water breaks," Hong said. "Addressing tactical issues during these breaks will obviously be important, but we also have to be ready physically. We may adjust our training programs accordingly. For instance, the players may work out for 22 minutes and then rest for three minutes."