It may not please the purists, but North Korea’s soccer team is firmly on course for the 2010 World Cup after reaching the last round of qualifying without losing or even conceding a goal.
If they do make it, it will be the isolated communist state’s first World Cup in 44 years and despite a lowly world ranking of 94, below such minnows as Gambia and Suriname.
The endeavors also come at a time when the country, ruled with an iron fist by Kim Jong-il, is believed to be suffering acute food shortages, reviving memories of a famine in the 1990s which left up to 1 million people dead.
PHOTO: AFP
Better known for its nuclear weapons program and bad human rights record, North Korea, who play all in white, have hardly endeared themselves either with their defensive brand of soccer.
Yet it appears to work.
In the previous qualifying group North Korea scored only four goals in their three wins and three draws, but they kept a clean sheet every time thanks to a solid rearguard action that would make Italy look adventurous.
With Brazil sitting uncomfortably in their qualifying group on the other side of the world and other end of the soccer spectrum, it raises the specter of a World Cup with North Korea but without the five-time champions.
One of the few who play outside North Korea’s tightly guarded borders is 24-year-old striker Jong Tae-se, of Kawasaki Frontale, a mid-table side in Japan’s J-League.
Japan-born Jong, dubbed “Asia’s Wayne Rooney” by South Korean media, is confident the North can reach South Africa 2010 despite being drawn in the harder of two final Asian qualifying groups.
“I think the players of the Republic have very high individual skills and the team has functioned as a unit with defensive tactics which allowed individual defensive skills to show. This is a factor in our success,” Jong said.
He believes the handful of team members who play in the “outside world” have helped the rest of the squad, most of whom ply their trade in Pyongyang’s 12-team central league.
“I think our presence rather than our capability is what matters most. I can feel how much they care about how we, as professionals playing soccer in the outside world, prepare ourselves mentally in training and matches,” he said.
North Korea are targeting only their second ever World Cup and first since England 1966, when they stunned the soccer world by becoming the first Asian team to reach the quarter-finals, upsetting Italy 1-0 en route.
Their new-found success under coach Kim Jong-hoon is a far cry from just a few years ago when they all but vanished from international soccer after losing to Japan and South Korea in qualifiers for the 1994 tournament.
Soccer may be the most popular sport in North Korea but that did not stop all-powerful leader Kim Jong-il, angered by the team’s poor fortunes, from banning the team from traveling abroad for 10 years.
They returned to international soccer at the Bangkok Asian Games in late 1999 but did not compete in qualifying for the 1998 World Cup in France or the 2002 edition.
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