Lee Im-sang, the technical director of the Korea Football Association, has left for Europe to meet with foreign coaches who are on the shortlist for the next national team coach.
According to the soccer world, Lee left for Europe on the morning of Feb. 2.
Lee will meet with former Greece national team coach Gus Poyet (56) and former Norwich City (England) manager David Wagner (52).
With domestic coaching candidates effectively ‘off the table’ as they are not wanted by the highest levels of the soccer federation and are themselves unavailable, Poyet, Wagner and current Australian national team coach Graham Arnold (60) remain the finalists.
Uruguayan Poyet played for big league clubs such as Real Zaragoza (Spain), Chelsea and Tottenham (England) during his playing career, while his coaching stints include Brighton, Sunderland (England), Athens (Greece) and Shanghai Shenhua (China).
Poyet is also a familiar name to fans in Korea, having coached Ki Sung-yueng (Seoul) at Sunderland during the 2013-2014 season when the club was competing in the English Premier League (EPL).
His career went downhill after he was sacked from Sunderland in 2015 due to poor results.
He was in charge of the Greek national team from 2022 until his contract expired after they failed to qualify for Euro 2024.
Wagner was born in Germany but has the unusual distinction of having played eight matches for the U.S. national team due to his American adoptive father’s nationality.
In his first first-team managerial role, Wagner led English Championship (Second Division) side Huddersfield Town to promotion to the EPL in the 2016-2017 season.
After leaving Huddersfield, he went on to manage German side Schalke (2019-2020), Swiss side Youngboys (2021-2022), and English second-tier side Norwich City (2023-2024).
At Schalke and Young Voices, he lasted less than a season, and at Norwich City, he lasted a year and four months before being sacked after failing to win promotion.
The engineer has been working on the selection of the next national team coach since Chung Jeong-sung, the chairman of the National Power Enhancement Committee, abruptly stepped down on March 28.
The NSC has been evaluating more than 100 foreign coaches who expressed interest in the position under Chung.
Chung reportedly believed that it was difficult to bring in attractive foreign coaches due to unrealistic conditions such as salary, so his decision was tilted toward domestic coaches such as Hong Myung-bo of Ulsan HD and Kim Do-hoon.
However, he was unable to convince the top brass at the KFA, who favored foreign managers, and eventually stepped down.
Following Chung’s departure, several members of the power strengthening committee resigned, and Lee is now in the process of selecting a new coach from a list of candidates that the power strengthening committee has already identified. 바카라사이트 추천