2002 World Cup Soccer Hangover

Red-shirted mania dwindles as struggling stadiums are being reinvented and nostalgia sets in

On Tuesday, June 25, 2002 South Korea was playing Germany in a World Cup semi-final, roared on by a frenzied, capacity crowd in a spanking new Seoul stadium.
One year later, Asia's most ever successful side have won only once in five games and the new venues built for the World Cup are having to reinvent themselves to make ends meet.
On the playing side it was always going to be an impossible task to sustain the form that brought sensational victories over Portugal, Spain and Italy before the Germans ended the dream in the last four.
Dutchman Guus Hiddink, still a national hero, is no longer in charge, having left as planned after the tournament and now enjoying more success as the boss of new Dutch champions PSV Eindhoven.
Former Portugal manager Humberto Coelho has struggled in his wake, winning only once, against Japan, and with his side managing only one goal in five matches.
Coelho has often had to make do without some of the top players from the World Cup squad, such as striker Seol Ki-hyeon and midfielder Kim Nam-il, who now ply their trade in Europe. Despite the setbacks, the national team continues to play in front of crowds of 60,000 plus at the Seoul World Cup Stadium.
However, only a few hundred die-hard supporters clad in red still gather in central Seoul to watch the games on giant television screens - in stark contrast to the incredible scenes last year when up to a million red-shirted supporters of all ages gathered on the streets.
Crowds have also continued to hold up well for the K-League, expanded to 12 clubs this season following the inclusion of Taegu from South Korea's third city and Sangmu Phoenix, based in the southern city of Kwangju.
However, the 10 stadiums built or refurbished at a cost of CDN $2.5 billion for the World Cup are struggling to pay their way, particularly those away from the big cities.
The 10 have suffered combined losses of around CDN $13 million over the past year and are resorting to increasingly desperate measures to balance the books.
The stadium in Sogwipo, standing proudly on the edge of the ocean on the southern resort island of Cheju and hard-hit by a typhoon which damaged its roof last year, is to become host for giant-screen IMAX films.
Part of the Chonju stadium's car park has been sold and is to be converted into a golf course and a wedding hall. Even the Seoul Stadium, best-placed to attract big events and regular international matches, recently hosted an opera while a supermarket has opened within in the complex.
Despite the struggle to fill the stadiums, the country's appetite for holding international sporting events appears undiminished. Pusan staged the 2002 Asian Games while Taegu will play host to this year's World Student Games.
But it is the World Cup, and the way it brought Korea into the world spotlight, that remains the chief source of pride and renewed self-confidence in a country where deep scars remain after half a century of Japanese colonial rule and the 1950-53 Korean War. It did, in fact, have very little to do with soccer, but more with the Koreans' love of a massive event and of bonding that created last year's amazing scenes.
Thousands of those turning Seoul into a seas of red had little real idea of what was going on in front of them or of the significance of the victories but they knew whatever it was they felt a part of it.
In the past three weeks, newspapers have run nostalgic articles giving a detailed account of each of Korea's increasingly unlikely World Cup wins, one even comparing the initial success against Portugal to the country's liberation from Japanese rule in 1945.
Nightclubs have organized "red devil" parties where giant screens replay the matches as the population briefly relives a glorious month the like of which they will never experience again.
The story is, however, very different across the sea in the land of the rising sun. While this time last year no self-respecting Japanese fan would be seen without a David Beckham mohican haircut, the sign of true street-craze as World Cup fever swept the country.
But one year on, Japan are struggling for results, the futuristic stadiums built for the 2002 World Cup are heavily in debt and the only Beckham in town is three metres tall and made of chocolate. The feel-good factor from co-hosting the first Asian World Cup with South Korea has gone.
Beckham-mania may be alive and kicking in Japan, where they even sculpted a giant chocolate statue of the England captain, but has failed to lift the gloom for Zico, Japan's Brazilian national team manager. He has won just twice in 10 games since taking over as coach after the World Cup.
The pressure increased on the Brazilian after a disappointing early exit from the Confederations Cup this month which prompted chants of "Zico out" from a section of Japanese fans.
His predecessor, Philippe Troussier, had frequent bust-ups with his players and bickered constantly with Japanese officials. However the Frenchman proved there was method to his madness after guiding Japan to the last 16 of the World Cup,
Zico has dropped both the mean streak and 3-5-2 formula used by Troussier in favour of a 4-4-2 line-up overly reliant on Europe-based midfielders Hidetoshi Nakata, Shunsuke Nakamura and the injury-prone Shinji Ono.
So far the new system has failed to yield results, despite a much-improved performance in the 2-1 defeat by France in their second Group A match at the Confederations Cup.
Japanese tax payers, meanwhile, many of whom have little interest in soccer in a country where baseball has much deeper roots, have more pressing concerns since they could be counting the cost of the World Cup until 2030.
Eight of the 10 stadiums used for matches in Japan face combined losses of over CDN $28 million in the current fiscal year which began in April, while there are still outstanding debts of some CDN $25 million from ground construction.
International Stadium Yokohama, venue for the World Cup final, is worst off with losses estimated at CDN $6.5 million as it struggles to meet annual operating costs of Cdn $9.5 million.
In order to alleviate the financial burden, city officials are taking bids to rename the 70,000-seat stadium at a starting price of $6.5 million a year for a minimum five-year period.
Meanwhile, semi-final venue Saitama has opted for a more unusual method of raising cash by holding goalmouth weddings to help pay off debts and rekindle some of the World Cup glow.
At the professional level, the 2002 World Cup has had little tangible effect on the domestic game with only a negligible rise in J-League attendance three months into the 2003 season.
J-League clubs have averaged crowds of 16,912 so far this year, only a fraction up from 16,368 in 2002 while the exodus of Japan players such as Nakamura, Naohiro Takahara and Atsushi Yanagisawa since the World Cup has not helped ticket sales.
From a broader perspective, the World Cup strengthened ties between the co-hosts, who have shared a difficult past marked by Japan's military rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. However, South Korea overshadowed Japan at the World Cup with their incredible run to the semi-finals and Japanese officials now want to stage the tournament exclusively by the year 2050.
But to achieve that ambitious goal, Japan will need to produce more consistent results over the next few years, starting with the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Publication Date: 2003-07-06
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2914