June 9 (Reuters) – South Korea’s Bae Jun-ho is \u2060unlikely to feature in his nation’s World Cup opener against the Czech Republic in Guadalajara on Thursday \u2060as the midfielder continues to recover from an injury to his ankle sustained in a 5-0 \u200cwin over Trinidad and Tobago 10 days ago.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Stoke City playmaker missed his nation’s 1-0 victory over El Salvador on Thursday and has trained on his own in an increasingly unlikely bid to be ready for South Korea’s opening Group A clash against Miroslav Koubek’s side.<\/p>\n
Bae is \u200bone of the youngest players in coach Hong Myung-bo’s squad and is \u2060expected to add a dash of youthful vigour \u2060to a line-up that laboured throughout Asia’s preliminaries before securing their berth at an 11th consecutive World Cup.<\/p>\n
The Koreans \u2060reached \u200cthe last 16 in 2022, with Hwang Hee-chan scoring a stoppage time winner against Portugal to take his team into the knockout rounds and the Wolverhampton Wanderers forward is keen for a repeat performance at the \u2060upcoming tournament.<\/p>\n
“If I can have another play like that, it will be \u200bgreat for myself and for our \u200cteam,” said Hwang, who will be appearing at his third World Cup. “I am working hard for a \u2060moment like that. <\/p>\n
“Every match \u200bis important, but the first match is especially so.”<\/p>\n
The Czechs enter the World Cup riding a wave of confidence after six wins in qualification and friendly matches following a crisis late last year when they lost to the Faroe Islands.<\/p>\n
That result marked \u2060the low point of a then-stuttering qualifying campaign and led to \u200bthe appointment of 74-year-old Koubek, who guided the Czechs through the playoffs to their first World Cup appearance since 2006.<\/p>\n
The Czechs will seek to impose their physicality on the South Koreans, potentially looking to two-metre Slavia Prague striker Tomas Chory \u2060who headed in a goal in the 3-1 tournament tune-up match against Guatemala on June 6.<\/p>\n
Organisational discipline will feature heavily and is something Koubek believes will need to improve following some miscommunication during their 3-1 win over Guatemala.<\/p>\n
“Some defensive solutions were not entirely decisive, that’s true,” Koubek told reporters after the match. “We should have been more assertive in the \u200bduels. There were some slip-ups.”<\/p>\n
The Czechs will hope Patrik Schick’s goal against \u2060Guatemala means the Bayer Leverkusen striker and Euro 2020 joint top scorer has found form while Hoffenheim striker Adam Hlozek \u200boffers another experienced option up front.<\/p>\n
Koubek will also lean on West Ham \u200cmidfielder Tomas Soucek and 35-year-old Vladimir Darida — who earned a \u200brecall to the national team after impressing for Hradec Kralove in the Czech top tier this season — to provide experience and stability. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Michael Church, additional reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Pritha Sarkar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 9 (Reuters) – South Korea’s Bae Jun-ho is \u2060unlikely to feature in his nation’s World Cup opener…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21224],"tags":[21234,8160,9548,13444],"class_list":["post-59669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bae","tag-bae","tag-bae-systems","tag-fifa","tag-world-cup"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116722882668785427","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}