Will another “living legend” who led FC Seoul in its heyday as a player and coach be able to save the team as a firefighter? After the voluntary resignation of Ahn Ik-soo, Seoul will take on its first challenge under Kim Jin-gyu.
The Seoul Football Club announced on the 22nd that it has decided to accept the will of former coach Ahn Ik-soo, who announced his intention to resign immediately after the match against Daegu FC on the 19th, and appointed head coach Kim Jin-gyu as acting head coach.
Under Kim, Seoul will make its debut in the 28th round of the Hana OneQ K League 1 2023 with a home match against Ulsan Hyundai (1st place, 60 points) at 7 p.m. on Nov. 27 at Seoul World Cup Stadium.
Seoul had gone five matches without a win (three draws and two defeats) before the last round, and in the last three matches, they conceded the winning or equalizing goal after the 35th minute and missed out on a narrow victory. This has again exposed the lack of depth in the build-up tactics that Ahn’s regime has emphasized.
Seoul is ranked fourth in K League 1 (39 points), but only two points behind seventh-place Daejeon Hana Citizen (36 points), who are also in the Final B. With the looming prospect of missing out on the Final B for the third consecutive season, Ahn relinquished the reins, saying he needed to “make changes to the team.”
Kim politely declined media requests for interviews and quickly focused on stabilizing the team. On the 23rd, just four days before the game, he worked with the players in the rain to heat up the Guri GS Champion Spark. He brought back coach Park Hyuk-soon, who had assisted Ahn until last year and then left Seoul.
Seoul had never had a coach resign during the season until 2010, but since 2011, there have been six head coaches and seven acting coaches, and it has become a “graveyard of coaches,” with four full-time coaches (Hwang Sun-hong, Choi Yong-soo, Park Jin-seop, Ahn Ik-soo) and two acting coaches (Lee Eul-yong, Kim Ho-young) leaving the organization in the last five years since 2018.
Seoul is not a team that relied on a specific coach during its heyday, and there are voices that the club has neglected to establish a vision and philosophy for the past five years and appoint leaders accordingly. It is said that the team has repeatedly hired leaders to put out fires because of immediate results. In the meantime, Yoo, who was well-received for his ability to bridge the gap between the front office and the players, also had difficulties with consistent administration. The general consensus is that Kim should continue to communicate with Yoo and carefully select a leader to lead Seoul’s rebuilding. 바카라사이트
In that sense, expectations are high for Kim. He made his professional debut with Jeonnam in 2003, joined Seoul in 2007 and played in the black and white until 2015, with the exception of one season (2011) when he played in China and Japan. He played 270 games (220 league, 35 ACL, 15 FA Cup) for Seoul and was part of the team’s heyday, winning two league titles (2010, 2012), one FA Cup (2015) and finishing as ACL runner-up (2013). He retired from active duty with Daejeon in 2017 and returned to Seoul in 2018 to coach the club’s U-18 team, Osango, before joining the first-team coaching staff in 2020.
Seoul signed Hwang Bo-kwan in April 2011.