In a development so predictable it could have been scripted by a cliché-generating AI, South Korea’s football coach has upped sticks and buggered off into the night after the national team’s ignominious exit from the World Cup. Cue the British Football Association, emerging from the fog like a tweed-clad cavalry, offering to ‘share expertise’ in rebuilding Asian football governance. Because nothing says ‘colonial hangover’ quite like a bunch of chaps with rolled-up sleeves turning up to put the ‘great’ back into the Great Game.
Let us first observe the sheer theatricality of the departing coach. He stood there, a lone figure in the Seoul drizzle, probably clutching a half-eaten kimbap and a bottle of soju, blinking back tears that could have filled the Han River. His resignation statement was a masterpiece of understatement: ‘I have decided to step down after a period of reflection.’ Translation: ‘I would rather chew my own arm off than face another press conference asking about defensive lapses.’ The poor sod’s tenure had been a rollercoaster of high hopes and low outcomes, culminating in a World Cup campaign that was less Taeguk Warriors and more Taeguk Worriers. They scraped through the group stage on a technicality involving a referee’s astigmatism, then capitulated to a team from a country with less than half their population. Football, eh?
But wait. What’s that rumbling sound? Is it thunder? A malfunctioning air conditioning unit? No, it’s the British FA, revving up their Land Rover of condescension, ready to ‘offer expertise’ to Asian football governance. Now, I don’t wish to be unkind, but the last time the British FA ‘offered expertise’ to anyone, they ended up appointing a manager whose strategy involved playing the same four mediocre midfielders until they expired of natural causes. Their own women’s team, the Lionesses, had to stage a revolt to get better conditions. Their men’s team’s greatest triumph in decades was coming second in a tournament they hosted. And yet here they are, like a bald man selling hair tonic, offering to ‘rebuild’ the game in Asia.
Let’s examine the terms of this ‘offer’. It involves ‘governance workshops’, ‘elite coaching seminars’, and ‘a comprehensive review of youth development structures’. In layman’s terms, this means: ‘We’ll send over some retired blokes with leather-bound notebooks who will talk at you for three days about the importance of lads’ names being in the right order on the team sheet.’ The Korean FA, presumably grateful for the attention, has accepted with the enthusiasm of a man being offered a free umbrella on a rainy day, only to discover it’s made of cyanide-laced lace.
But let’s dig deeper, because I’m a journalist and that’s what we do, even if it means getting our hands dirty with metaphorical manure. The real story here is not about football. It never is. It’s about the cultural schizophrenia that grips a nation that went from being a war-ravaged peninsular to a global tech hub in the space of a generation. South Korea’s football identity is a mess precisely because it tries to be both Asian and European, both traditional and modern, both disciplined and creative. The coach was caught in the crossfire, caught between a football board who wanted ‘philosophy’ and a public who wanted ‘kicking the ball into the net’. You can’t ‘rebuild’ that with a PowerPoint presentation.
And what currency does Britain have to offer? Our own football governance is a shambles: clubs run by oligarchs and oil states, grassroots funding that relies on the kindness of strangers, and a national team that is perpetually ‘a work in progress’. But never mind that. The British FA has sent a delegation to Korea, led by a man whose sole qualification appears to be having once shaken hands with Bobby Charlton in a car park. They will ‘listen’ and ‘learn’ and then produce a 400-page report that will be translated into Korean, printed on recycled paper, and forgotten in a drawer somewhere.
The coach, meanwhile, will resurface in a year, managing a club in Qatar or China, earning three times his previous salary while his Korean replacement grapples with the same impossible expectations. The British FA will declare the project a ‘success’ and move on to the next failing football federation, leaving behind a trail of broken dreams and ill-fitting blazers. And the rest of us? We’ll be left clutching our heads, wondering why the beautiful game is so bloody ugly.
I, for one, will be drinking a gin and tonic. A stiff one. With a side order of schadenfreude. Because in the end, the only expertise Britain has to offer is how to lose gracefully. And frankly, that’s the only lesson worth learning.
