The Korean Football Association will give each player a 50 million won incentive to win the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup in Qatar next January.
The KFA held a board meeting at the Jongno Football Hall in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on Thursday to finalize the amount of the Asian Cup reward. It’s a carrot for the national soccer team as it seeks its first Asian title in 64 years.
South Korean soccer is the highest-ranked Asian nation at the World Cup, the world’s biggest stage, with four quarterfinals and the most qualifications (11), but it hasn’t won the Asian Cup. South Korea has only won two Asian Cups, the inaugural edition in 1956 and the second edition in Seoul four years later.
They will need to complete their royal return at the Qatar Asian Cup if they want to be considered the best in Asia. The time is right to reclaim the top spot. Last year’s run to the round of 16 at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar revitalized South Korean soccer, and with a stronger European contingent than ever, including Son Heung-min (Tottenham Hotspur), Kim Min-jae (Bayern Munich), Lee Kang-in (Paris Saint-Germain), Hwang Hee-chan (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Lee Jae-sung (Mainz), and Jung Woo-young (Stuttgart), the team is said to be the strongest it has ever been.
Klinsmann is also aiming to win the Asian Cup. The preparation period was longer than usual. Unlike the Asian Cup, which is usually held in the summer after the World Cup, with a new coach and half a year to prepare, the Asian Cup in Qatar was held in the winter, giving Jürgen Klinsmann nearly a year to prepare. Klinsmann’s side have won three straight matches since beating Saudi Arabia in their September A match.
Klinsmann has begun to emphasize winning the Asian Cup. “I told the players, ‘The Asian Cup is yours. We haven’t lifted the trophy in a long time, and it’s yours,” he said, adding, “We will be judged at the Asian Cup and we will be held accountable for the results.”
In November, when he gathered his players together for the second round of Asian qualifiers for the North American World Cup, he told them, “You can bring your families to Qatar. I told them to book a hotel until the day of the final.” It’s a testament to Klinsmann’s desire to win the Asian Cup.
If Klinsmann leads the team to the top of the Asian Cup, the national team coaching staff will be paid separately as per the terms of their contract. 무지개토토
Meanwhile, the KFA’s board of directors also decided to reward the 22 members of the men’s U-24 national team, who won their third consecutive gold medal at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, which concluded in October, with 20 million won each.
The women’s national team, which competed at the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in July, will also receive 30,000 U.S. dollars (about $39 million) each as an incentive under FIFA’s dividend policy.
