The South Korean men’s national soccer team’s path to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is to include a crucial road match against North Korea, but it is unclear whether a rare match between the Koreas in Pyongyang will materialize, considering political tensions.
With the Koreas, there is never a separation between sports and politics. North Korea has previously refused to allow South Korean players to enter the country for World Cup qualifiers, forcing FIFA to relocate its home games to Shanghai.
Drawn in the same Asian qualifying group on Wednesday, the Koreas are scheduled for a match in North Korea on Oct. 15 and in South Korea on June 4 next year. Group H also includes Lebanon, Turkmenistan and Sri Lanka.
The South Korean men’s team last played in Pyongyang in 1990 for a friendly match.
Experts are mixed on whether North Korea would choose to host South Korea at home, as relations between the two have cooled significantly in past months amid stalled nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.
Some analysts say the qualifier in North Korea is likely to happen because of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has a passion for sports, has tried to present himself as an international statesman while pursuing diplomacy to leverage his nukes for security and economic benefits.
Wherever they take place, the matches between the Koreas are likely to be intense.
The South Korean Football Association said that their two matches against North Korea and the road match against Lebanon would be critical in determining whether they make it to Qatar.
While Korean athletes have jointly marched in ceremonies and competed as teammates during the Olympics and other sporting events, World Cup qualifiers are all about national pride, with nearly every match considered a must-win.
“South Korean people will get very angry if the national team fails to qualify for the World Cup,” said Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Korea University.
If the World Cup qualifier in North Korea does take place, a potential venue would be Pyongyang’s massive May Day Stadium, where South Korean President Moon Jae-in last year delivered a speech to a 150,000-capacity crowd while visiting for his third summit with Kim.
Aside from issuing aspirational statements on a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and stabilized peace, Kim and Moon agreed that the Koreas would pursue a joint bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics and also send more combined teams to next year’s Tokyo Games and other major sports events.
However, relations have sourced since the collapse of a nuclear summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in February over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament.
North Korea has since ignored South Korea’s calls to organize combined teams in field hockey, basketball, judo and other sports for the qualifying rounds for the Tokyo Olympics.
It has also refused to send North Korean athletes to the World Swimming Championships under way in Gwangju, South Korea.
The next generation of running talent takes center stage at today’s Berlin Marathon, in the absence of stars including Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge and Ethiopian world record holder Tigist Assefa. With most of the major marathon stars skipping the event in the wake of the Paris Olympics just more than a month ago, the field is wide open in the men’s and women’s races. Since 2015, Kipchoge has won five times in Berlin, Kenenisa Bekele has won twice and Guye Adola once — with all three missing today. Kenyan Kibiwott Kandie and Ethiopian Tadese Takele are among the favourites for the men, while
Taiwan’s Tony Wu yesterday beat Mackenzie McDonald of the US to win the Nonthaburi Challenger IV in Thailand, his first challenger victory since 2022. The 26-year-old world No. 315, who won both his qualifiers to advance to the main draw, has been on a hot streak this month, winning his past nine matches, including two that ensured Taiwan’s victory in their Davis Cup World Group I tie. Wu took just more than two hours to top world No. 172 McDonald 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) to win his second challenger tournament since the Tallahassee Tennis Challenger in 2022. Wu’s Tallahassee win followed two years of
Zhang Shuai yesterday said that she nearly quit after losing 24 matches in a row — now the world No. 595 is into the quarter-finals of her home China Open. The 35-year-old is to face Spain’s Paula Badosa as the lowest-ranked player to reach this stage in the history of the tournament after Badosa reeled off 11 of the last 12 games in a 6-4, 6-0 victory over US Open finalist Jessica Pegula. Zhang went into Beijing on a barren run lasting more than 600 days and her string of singles defeats was the second-longest on the WTA Tour Open era, which
Taiwanese martial artists bagged one gold, four silver and three bronze medals at the World Junior Wushu Championships in Brunei, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Brunei Darussalam said yesterday. Liu Yu-tzu won the gold medal in the girl’s taijiquan A group and also picked up a silver medal in the girl’s taijijian A group. Hu Hsin-ling, Yu Min-hsun and Chen Chao-hsiang each won a silver medal in the girl’s jianshu B, boy’s nangun B and boy’s taijijian A groups respectively. Hu also won a bronze medal in the girl’s qiangshu B group, while Yu and Lin Shih-hung picked up bronze medals
RSS