Seoul, September 1, 2026 \u2013 South Korea\u2019s underfire football association on Tuesday appointed former Spain boss Robert Moreno as interim coach, following a disastrous World Cup and series of damaging controversies.<\/p>\n
Moreno, who was forced to deny earlier this year that he used ChatGPT to prepare for games during a stint in Russia, will be in charge for friendly games in September-October.<\/p>\n
South Korea will compete in the Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia from Jan 7 to Feb 5.<\/p>\n
The Korea Football Association (KFA) said Moreno could lead the team at the Asian Cup, \u201csubject to an evaluation\u201d of his performance.<\/p>\n
The team have been without a coach since Hong Myung-bo quit following their shock group-stage exit from the World Cup in North America in June.<\/p>\n
Hong\u2019s departure did little to quell public outrage over the disappointing campaign and added fuel to pre-existing questions about how he was hired.<\/p>\n
Police raided KFA headquarters last month as part of an investigation into Hong\u2019s 2024 appointment.<\/p>\n
The KFA also apologised for allegations that it provided sexual entertainment for foreign referees.<\/p>\n
Moreno will lead South Korea for home friendlies against Ecuador and Uruguay in September and Venezuela and Uzbekistan in October.<\/p>\n
He would also be in charge if South Korea organise more friendlies during the November international window.<\/p>\n
The KFA said the 48-year-old had been hired after \u201can open recruitment process\u201d.<\/p>\n
He will become the first Spaniard to coach South Korea.<\/p>\n
Moreno took over the Spanish national team on a temporary basis in 2019 from Luis Enrique.<\/p>\n
He was appointed full-time in June that year after Luis Enrique resigned because his daughter Xana was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer.<\/p>\n
Spain rehired Luis Enrique to replace Moreno in November 2019 after his daughter\u2019s death. The coach accused Moreno of being \u201cdisloyal\u201d for trying to stay in charge for Euro 2020.<\/p>\n
Moreno, who has also coached Monaco and Granada, was accused by Russian media in January of using AI to prepare for games during his time in charge of Sochi.<\/p>\n
Moreno, who left the top-flight side in September 2025 after a poor run of results, denied the reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never used ChatGPT or any AI to prepare matches, decide line-ups or choose players. That is completely false,\u201d he wrote in an open letter sent to Spanish newspaper Marca.<\/p>\n
Moreno said he used technology in his job but made his decisions himself and with his staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy career in football began precisely through data and video analysis. It\u2019s what I specialise in and what made the difference in my early days,\u201d he said. \u2013 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seoul, September 1, 2026 \u2013 South Korea\u2019s underfire football association on Tuesday appointed former Spain boss Robert Moreno…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[71164,13356,197,31,84,6642],"class_list":["post-139745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-robertmoreno","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-korea","tag-soccer","tag-southkorea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}