What Goes Around…Comes Around for FC Seoul

By: Brett | April 25th, 2009

Justin Timberlake was right – what goes around…comes around. Lie and you will get caught, wear parachute pants and people will think your a doosh, defend poorly against quality teams and you will concede goals.

Two match days left in the Asian Champions League and FC Seoul are up against it. Not only do they need to give Sriwijaya FC a Barca style mauling next match day, but they also need at least a draw, preferably a win, from they’re trip to Osaka on match day 6.

Oh yeah, they also need Shandong to fall in a heap and lose to both Gamba and an Indonesian side who have, thus far, conceded 17 goals in four games.

Not likely.

How did last season’s K-League runner-up get itself into this position?

Easy. Naive, slack and, at times, downright lazy defending.

Match day 1. Seoul are three nil up with just over an hour gone and cruising against Sriwijaya FC. Seemingly. On 68 minutes, Cameroonian striker Claude Ngon Djam runs onto a hopeful long ball, not a defender in sight, and calmly slots home. 3-1. Five minutes later he popped up again, heading home at the near post. 3-2. Seoul would steady and eventually win 4-2, but the signs were there.

Gamba Osaka were in town on match day 2. A lazy pass coming out of defense gifts the visitors the lead after thirteen minutes. Seoul battle tirelessly to earn themselves a leveler on fifty-five minutes. Five minutes later their behind again thanks to an Yasuhito Endo corner and a completely unmarked Leandro at the far post. He would end up getting a hat-trick in the 4-2 win for the Japanese outfit. “We were defeated because players made unexpected errors”, lamented FC Seoul manager Senol Gunes after the match.

There was no defensive improvement on match day 3 as Seoul travelled to Jinan to take on Shandong Luneng. A decent cross from Cui Peng in the 54th minute found an unmarked Lu Zheng, who finished well to give the Chinese side the lead.

Seoul were the dominant team for much of the reverse fixture on Tuesday night, taking a 24th minute lead through Park Yong-ho. But, with ten minutes remaining, they conceded an equaliser as Shandong defender Alejandro Cichero headed home from close range. And yes, he was unmarked at the time.

Seeing a pattern here?

Defensive naivety has cost the Korean team in almost every match. Errors and lapses in concentration which they would probably get away with in the K-League, teams in the Champions League are making them pay dearly for.

They seem particularly inept at confidently defending anything that resembles a cross, whether it be from a corner or general play. It’s a massive weakness and one which they have not be able to rectify up to this point.

Publicly, Senol Gunes isn’t saying much about his sides defensive problems. Privately, he’s surely a worried man. Before the competition got under way, he would have seen qualification for the knockout phase as the bare minimum. As it stands now, FC Seoul are on the verge of Asian Champions League elimination, and they have no one to blame but themselves.