As it had hoped, the United States landed in South Korea. Better yet, the Americans were drawn with South Korea, the weakest of the eight seeds at the 2002 World Cup.
Busan is a testament to the economic miracle that is South Korea.
The first thing you notice in this port city is the cargo containers.
As far as the eye can see, on the road from Busan to Haeundae Beach, site of the Final Draw for the 2002 World Cup, there are cargo containers.
The road is jammed with trucks loaded with containers making their way in and out of the stockyards.
Night after night, Brits hang out at the bar of the Commodore Hotel in downtown Busan, waiting for their goods to head out to sea.
And soccer, you ask?
You have to make the 10-mile trek to the resort town of Haeundae Beach.
They say upward of a million Koreans pack the 1-mile beachfront on weekends in the summer. You can’t imagine how that’s possible. No matter. It’s late November, and the beach is deserted except for a lonely vendor selling dried squid.
FIFA has come for Haeundae’s hotels, the Paradise Beach with its casino and the Marriott, the resort’s biggest hotel.
The place to be is the Marriott lobby. It’s packed with Korean and Japanese television crews and journalists from France and Italy looking for stories.
If you hang out long enough, you’ll run across just about every national team coach in the World Cup. Bruce Arena is chatting with Alexandre Guimaraes of CONCACAF rival Costa Rica. Who’s that being interviewed in the corner? “It’s Gene Hackman,” someone jokes. No, it’s Big Phil, the much-maligned Brazilian coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari.
The biggest star? No contest. China coach Bora Milutinovic, now with his fifth World Cup team, is everyone’s friend. It helps, or so it would seem, that Bora knows five languages.
Giovanni Trapattoni, the Italian coach, asks Bora how he communicates in China.
“I say nothing to them,” Bora says with a laugh. “They say nothing to me. It’s very easy.”
FIRST AND LAST. This is the first World Cup to be held in Asia and the first co-hosted World Cup.
“This will be the first and last,” adds Michel Platini, co-president of the French ’98 organizing committee and a close adviser to FIFA president Sepp Blatter, when asked about the co-hosting arrangement.
The Korean (KOWOC) and Japanese (JAWOC) organizers work hard to get along, but old grudges are carried at the highest levels of their respective governments. Protocol is everything to the Japanese and Koreans, so they’re in quite a bind. Will Japanese Emperor Akihito attend the opening game in Seoul? The Korean government has no plans to invite him, and the Japanese aren’t about to ask for an invitation.
Japan wanted the World Cup, so South Korea jumped into the race. Both promised 10 new stadiums. FIFA couldn’t decide between the two, so Japan and South Korea both ended up with the 2002 World Cup. They’re living with the consequences.
The 2002 World Cup isn’t an easy sell abroad. Korea isn’t exactly a major tourist destination. Japan suffers from its reputation for outrageous prices.
Tickets sales have gone well in Japan, where there’s a growing soccer culture thanks to the J-League, in its ninth season. Korea has been another matter. Sales for the opening game, semifinal and three Korean matches were fine. Few tickets were sold for the other 27 games, forcing FIFA to take the unusual step of stipulating that newcomer China has to play in South Korea for “economic and geographical” reasons.
Asian Football Confederation general secretary Peter Velappan, who serves as the FIFA go-between between the Korean (KOWOC) and Japanese (JAWOC) organizers, estimated that 600,000 Chinese would travel to South Korea if they could get tickets.
Within hours of the draw, all available tickets for the three China games are gone.
NEW WRINKLE. No matter what they tried, the organizers of the Busan draw would have had a hard time matching the atmosphere at the draw four years ago in Marseilles, where FIFA had packed the 60,000-seat Stade VTlodrome for an all-star game beforehand, or 12 years ago at Rome’s Palazzo dello Sport, where Italian organizers shipped in hundreds of local schoolchildren.
The crowd of Korean VIPs sits silently throughout most of the 90-minute ceremonies.
(If the truth be told, there was hardly an air of anticipation in the press section either. More than a few sportswriters dozed off somewhere between the pansori performance and the Korean soprano’s aria – thanks in no small part to the somnolent heat that you find in all Korean office buildings in winter.)
According to local reports, Koreans have had a hard time getting a grip on the World Cup, and Michel Zen-Ruffinen, the FIFA general secretary, promises to thoroughly confuse them at the draw.
“You all know that it is very complicated,” says Zen-Ruffinen, the master of ceremonies for the draw. “Today, it is even more complex.”
There can be no more than two European teams per group. With the exception of UEFA, no confederation can have more than one representative in the same group. FIFA, which has gone to great lengths to balance the four Korea and four Japan groups, adds a new wrinkle. Teams from the same confederations have to be also split between the two countries.
The draw itself takes only 26 minutes.
MINIMAL TRAVEL. One person who wants to land in South Korea is Bruce Arena, the U.S. coach.
After the United States had qualified for the World Cup, a scouting party was immediately sent to Japan and South Korea to tour training centers and hotels.
No one in the U.S. delegation is about to come out and say they wanted to grouped with the Koreans, considered the weakest of the eight seeds, but they want to be based in Seoul.
“Given the World Cup, travel will be minimal,” says Arena.
The U.S. coach has another reason why he wanted to end up in Korea. There looms the possibility of sure death in Group F.
England is placed in Argentina’s group, setting up a rematch of their World Cup ’98 classic, and Sweden soon joins England, coached by Swede Sven Goran Eriksson.
The United States is in the last pot with the five African teams and two CONCACAF teams.
Senegal is drawn first, followed by South Africa and then Costa Rica.
With the fourth selection, Zen-Ruffinen announces that another “Central American team” has been pulled. The U.S. draw is set: Portugal, co-host South Korea and Poland.
Yes, it could have been a lot worse.
“We were one selection away from going to Japan,” Arena says later, “and could have ended up in that difficult Group F. I was relieved when we were drawn out as the last team to complete the Korean half of the draw.”
The Americans have gotten their wish. They’ll be based at the Misari ground, overlooking the Han River, in eastern Seoul.
KOWOC’s security department immediately goes to work, ordering special protection for the U.S. players and sending a 50-member SWAT team to greet the U.S. national team when it arrives in Seogwipo three days later for the friendly against South Korea.
According one local report, KOWOC is cooperating with the CIA to protect American soccer fans “expected to swarm into the nation.”
MATTER OF TRUST. Arena and the coaches of the other three Group D teams could use the SWAT team to protect them from the swarm of Korean media that descend upon them in the mixed-zone after the draw.
Antonio Oliveira, the Portuguese coach, climbs the podium first, surrounded by dozens of reporters. His attachT makes the mistake of opening up a box of national team guides, and the two Portuguese are almost knocked over in the ensuing scramble.
Arena is second, and the Koreans get right to the point.
Will the friendly in Korea be canceled?
“I’m already here,” Arena says.
What about the second USA-South Korea game, scheduled for the Gold Cup?
“That draw was made by our confederation,” he says.
Is it an advantage to meet twice before the World Cup?
“I don’t know,” says Arena. “We won’t know until June 10. We will know them much better than we do now, that is for sure.”
Asked who are his top European-based players, Arena rattles off half a dozen names.
“Do you trust your players?” someone asks.
Arena looks puzzled, unsure he hears correctly.
“Do you trust them?” the questioner repeats.
“I better trust them,” says Arena.
RED DEVIL CELEBRATIONS. No one faces a harder time with the vociferous Korean media than Dutchman Guus Hiddink, the Korean coach.
South Koreans are acutely aware that no host country has ever failed to qualify for the second round of the World Cup. It’s Hiddink’s responsibility that South Korea reaches the second round and does at least as well as the dreaded Japanese.
South Korea, which has never won a game in five World Cups, can use every break it can get.
The Red Devils, the Korean equivalent of Sam’s Army, have a quiet evening at the studios of Korean network PSB until the draw approaches the end.
When Zen-Ruffinen announces that the United States completes the South Korea group, the Red Devils jump up and down like they’ve just won the World Cup.
Getting what you want at the World Cup draw works both ways.
by Soccer America Managing Editor Paul Kennedy in Busan