South Korean football mobilised to stop the Jamboree scandal.카지노 The entire country, public and private, has been mobilised to prevent the Jamboree from becoming a national embarrassment, but football has not been spared.
As the 2023 World Scout Jamboree faced the prospect of failure due to heatwaves and poor organisation, a concert featuring popular K-pop singers was offered as almost the only solution to quell the discontent of participants from around the world.
The search for a venue for the jamboree’s closing ceremony and K-pop super live concert saw the Jeonju World Cup Stadium, home of professional football club Jeonbuk Hyundai, considered, and the FA Cup semi-final match between Jeonbuk and Incheon postponed. After a series of twists and turns, the event was moved to Seoul World Cup Stadium, home of FC Seoul, but the FA Cup semi-final had already been postponed.
The FA Cup, a prestigious competition that crowns the best in Korean football, both professional and amateur, has been curtailed. Jeonbuk and Incheon, Jeju and Pohang were scheduled to play the FA Cup semi-finals on 9 August and the final on 1 and 4 November, home and away, but the jamboree meant that the semi-finals would be played on 1 November and the final would be a single-legged affair on 4 November. For football fans, this means one less game to enjoy, and the four finalists will have to play a single-legged tie to decide the winner.
The fundamental reason is that the stadiums are owned by local governments. Jeonju World Cup Stadium is owned by the city of Jeonju and operated by the Jeonju Facilities Corporation. Seoul World Cup Stadium is owned by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and operated by the Seoul Facilities Corporation. Professional football teams can only use the stadiums as home grounds, not operate or manage them. This is an unequal structure that teams have no choice but to accept if the government or local government notifies them that the stadium will be used for something other than football matches.
In this way, the government and municipalities are on the top and the clubs are on the bottom. If the government and local governments treat professional football teams badly, there is nothing they can do about it. This attitude is reflected in the press release issued by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism when the Seoul World Cup Stadium was cancelled as the venue for the jamboree. The ministry touted that it had secured a budget to restore the turf, and said it would “cooperate with Seoul FC, which uses the stadium as its home.” The official government document incorrectly refers to FC Seoul as Seoul FC. This is the equivalent in European football of writing Real Madrid as Madrid Real, Hertha Berlin as Hertha Berlin, Paris Saint-Germain as Saint-Germain Paris, and AS Roma as AS Roma. This shows the lack of understanding, consideration and interest of the central government in Korean football.
It’s hard to imagine what the KFA, the country’s football governing body, could have done while the professional clubs were at such a disadvantage. The KFA, which came under fire in March for trying to pardon those involved in sports betting, groveled in front of the government and local governments during the scandal. It didn’t even issue a brief statement expressing regret or asking for help in preventing a recurrence. Footballers have been lashing out at the KFA for keeping their mouths shut throughout the whole situation. The fact that a former vice minister of culture and sports with no football experience has been serving as a full-time vice president of the KFA since May has been criticised.
This series of events has once again revealed the totalitarian view that sports should be sacrificed for the sake of the nation, and the authoritarian view that sports and athletes are belittled. Ultimately, if football is to avoid the same kind of embarrassment, it will have to become something that governments and local authorities cannot afford to mess with. If this had happened in England, the home of football, and the English government had pressured Manchester United to postpone an FA Cup match because they wanted to use Old Trafford as a jamboree venue, would football fans in England and around the world have stood still?
The K League needs to become more self-sustaining. Whether it’s luring stars like Ronaldo and Neymar with money like the overwhelmingly well-funded Saudi Arabian league, or making itself attractive enough for Lionel Messi to choose it as his final destination, like the US Major League Soccer (MLS), it can no longer be ignored as it once was. The unfortunate thing is that it seems unlikely at the moment.