round of 16 set; korea heartbroken

*note: the following post was written immediately after the switzerland v. korea match, almost 24 hours ago now. my apologies for being late in posting here.

well, for most of the 48 million people on the peninsula who live south of the 38th parallel, the 2006 world cup is effectively over, for there will no korean side–in fact, no asian one, either–in the knockout rounds after they went down, 2-0, to switzerland in the final match of the group stages.

in the pub where i watched this morning’s switzerland v. korea match, there was a lot of optimism before kickoff. however, nearly from the very start, it was evident that the swiss had brought their “a” game and the koreans had not. the swiss outplayed, outdefensed, outpassed, and outhustled the taeguk warriors almost from the beginning. philippe senderos’s 23rd minute bullet header put the red-clad swiss deservedly in front and, despite a furious korean push to end the half, that was the scoreline at the break.

the restart saw the koreans pushing just as hard as they had to end the first half, but it left them vulnerable to swiss counterattacks. korea really never seemed a threat to score, though they came closest in the 66th minute when jae-jin cho headed a chun-soo lee cross toward the goal, only to have it cleared at the last by swiss ‘keeper pascal zuberbuehler. this came several moments after the koreans had appealed to the ref for a penalty kick for a handball on a swiss defender in his own box, but the ref correctly ignored the korean protests.

at this point, france were ahead of togo in their match, 2-0, which meant korea had to score two goals to win to be able to advance; a korea draw with france ahead, 2-0, would do the asians no good, so they poured forward seeking, first, the equaliser first and, second, the winner. but the match’s second goal would not come from the white-clad asians.

instead, the europeans scored the next goal and it, scored 13 minutes from time, was not without controversy, albeit undeserved controversy. deep in the korean end, a pass from a swiss player was deflected inadvertently by a korean defender to teammate alexander frei, who tiptoed around korean goalkeeper woon-jae lee and slotted home from an acute angle. the linesman on the side closest to the play raised his flag for offside, but was correctly overruled by the ref because of the korean defender’s touch on the ball, which negated the offside. the koreans vehemently protested, but to no avail; it was karma coming around for payback for some of the calls in ‘02 that went korea’s way.

in the end, though, the controversy was unwarranted and of no consequence to the outcome, as switzerland were the better team and, as france got the better of togo, 2-0, the ‘02 semifinalists, whom everyone here thought had started so well to beat togo and draw with france, were left to rue their slew of poor finishing and suspect defending (woon-jae lee excluded) in all three matches. in the end, to be fair, korea didn’t deserve to advance and will be trudging home shortly with lots of “what ifs” running through their minds.

in the early matches of the night, from group h, a second-string spain side saw off saudi arabia, 0-1, and ukraine struggled to put away ten-man tunisia, 1-0, but with the spain result, the ukrainians only needed a draw to advance, anyway.

thus, the final two fixtures of the round of 16 are now set: spain v. france and switzerland v. ukraine.

and the knockout stages begin later tonight with germany v. sweden at 11:59pm, korea time, and argentina v. mexico in the early sunday morning 4am fixture.

now, the fun really begins…