Soccer is a big sport in Korea. It's not as popular as baseball but, there's still a lot of interest, especially for the national team. Koreans seem to have a lot of affection and hope for their team, which feels strange for someone used to being an England fan. We tend to look at our team with mistrust and jealousy. Anyway, when the World Cup began people started going nuts. Red t-shirts began popping up everywhere, as did Red 'devil' horns (they refer to the national team as the Red Devils) and also a million TV ads featuring the World Cup, Park Ji Sung and Lee Chung Yong. Kim Yu Na was also in a bunch of WC ads too but, that doesn't count because she features in 80% of adverts here anyway.
For Korea's opening match against Greece I decided to journey down to Busan to watch the game on the beach. The atmosphere was terrific. Thousands of excited Koreans...and a few whiteys...warm weather, booze and footie - it doesn't get much better. To top it all off, Korea won. Awesome!
Oh, and this post is called 'Fighting 2' because 'Fighting!' is a popular expression here. It's an exclamation of encouragement... a bit like saying 'Come on!' or something like that.
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It looks like your World Cup was a lot more exciting than ours. Did you catch the England game? Do you still think that England can be a force in world football? Come back Sven, everything is forgiven. At least he got us to two quarter-finals. Now we're stuck with this Italian clown because the FA can't afford to sack him! Why on earth they didn't learn from the last two fuck ups and give him a shorter-term contract I don't know.
ReplyDeleteMan, football is depressing.
I'm trying to forget all about England's participation in the World Cup.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird how Capello thought beating European minnows in qualifying meant our team was ticketyboo and ready for the World Cup. I just hope this shakes Capello and the FA up and we can put together a TEAM for the 2012 euros. I mean, look at Holland. There is no way that their first 11 is better than ours...on paper at least...but they have played like a proper team.