New head coach named for men’s nat’l football team for Asian Games, Olympics

Former South Korea international Lee Min-sung was named new head coach for the under-22 men’s national team Tuesday.

The Korea Football Association (KFA) said Lee, 51, will be in charge of the 2026 Asian Games and, if South Korea qualify, the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Both tournaments are open to players 23 years old or younger, with each team allowed to carry up to three overage players.

Lee earned 67 caps for South Korea as a defender and represented the country at the 1998 and 2002 FIFA World Cups. Though he only scored twice in his international career, one of them made him a household name. In a World Cup qualifying match against Japan in Tokyo on Sept. 28, 1997, Lee netted the go-ahead goal in the 86th minute to lift South Korea to a 2-1 victory.

After his playing career ended, Lee began his coaching career in 2010, and went on to work with clubs in China and South Korea.

In 2018, Lee was the top assistant for the South Korean U-23 men’s national team that won the Asian Games gold medal in Indonesia. With Lee on the staff, South Korea also won the 2020 Asian Football Confederation U-23 Championship.

Lee took over as head coach of then second-tier club Daejeon Hana Citizen FC in December 2020 and helped them earn promotion to the top-flight K League 1 for the 2023 season. He resigned in May 2024.

The KFA said its National Teams Committee met on May 7 to review its pool of candidates for the U-22 job, and then whittle them down after going over their game models and tactics from previous coaching stops.

Following an interview, Lee emerged as the top candidate, and the KFA’s board of directors approved his appointment this week.

“Lee has strong conviction in his game model and demonstrated a lot of confidence in his ability to lead the U-22 team,” said Hyun Young-min, head of the National Teams Committee. “We also liked his experience of having helped the country to the 2018 Asian Games gold medal and having elevated Daejeon from the K League 2 to the K League 1.”

Lee will make his U-22 national team debut in a friendly against Australia at 7 p.m. on June 6 at Yongin Mireu Stadium in Yongin, some 40 kilometers south of Seoul.

The 28-man South Korean squad for that match will feature Stoke City midfielder Bae Jun-ho and Hannover 96 midfielder Lee Hyun-ju.

South Korea are the three-time defending champions in Asian Games men’s football. However, they failed to qualify for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, the first time the country missed out on the quadrennial event since 1984.