{"id":55944,"date":"2024-02-03T20:12:40","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T20:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/zombie-football-keeps-son-and-south-korea-alive-at-asian-cup-the-express-tribune\/"},"modified":"2024-02-03T20:12:40","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T20:12:40","slug":"zombie-football-keeps-son-and-south-korea-alive-at-asian-cup-the-express-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/zombie-football-keeps-son-and-south-korea-alive-at-asian-cup-the-express-tribune\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Zombie football’ keeps Son and South Korea alive at Asian Cup | The Express Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\nDOHA:
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Korea’s Asian Cup performances have been dubbed “zombie football” but Son Heung-min says the way they keep coming back to life shows the team have the spirit to go all the way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Koreans rose from the dead again in Friday’s 2-1 quarter-final victory over Australia<\/a>, with Son winning a 96th-minute penalty that Hwang Hee-chan converted to take the game to extra time.<\/p>\n

Skipper Son then sealed the win with a sublime free-kick in the 104th minute to send South Korea into a semi-final against Jordan.<\/p>\n

Jurgen Klinsmann’s men have only won one game inside 90 minutes in Qatar, and Hwang’s penalty was the fourth time in five games that they have scored in second-half injury time.<\/p>\n

Korean media have compared the team to undead movie monsters but Tottenham’s Son said it was a testament to their resilience.<\/p>\n

“Whatever names people give it isn’t important — one thing I can say for sure is that this is just helping us stick together even more,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Playing 120 minutes is painful, it’s not easy. But the spirit the boys are showing is making us stick together.<\/p>\n

“I can say with confidence that our strength is that we are all together,” he added.<\/p>\n

South Korea are trying to win the Asian Cup for the first time in 64 years — and they seem intent on doing it the hard way.<\/p>\n

They needed an injury-time own goal to salvage a point against Jordan in the group stage, before conceding a last-gasp equaliser in a 3-3 draw with Malaysia.<\/p>\n

They beat Roberto Mancini’s Saudi Arabia on penalties in the last 16 after scoring a 99th-minute equaliser to take the game to extra time.<\/p>\n

South Korea<\/a>‘s squad boasts Europe-based stars such as Son, Paris Saint-Germain’s Lee Kang-in and Bayern Munich’s Kim Min-jae.<\/p>\n

Klinsmann said he wants his team to show their quality from the start.<\/p>\n

“We go a goal down and then we all know we can only go forward,” said the German.<\/p>\n

“Then they start to speed things up, they start to create chances, they start to have movement off the ball that we always want to see from the beginning.”<\/p>\n

Klinsmann and some of his players — excluding Son — have come in for fierce criticism from Korean fans and media.<\/p>\n

Klinsmann believes the players are “worrying a little too much”.<\/p>\n

“Maybe because the expectations at home are that we’re going to bring this title home, maybe this is a little bit in the back of our minds, ‘What if not?’,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Maybe that blocks it in the first half a little bit.”<\/p>\n

Son said the games against Saudi Arabia and Australia were probably the first time in his career that he had played extra-time matches back to back.<\/p>\n

He said the experience was “not as bad as you think” and refused to blame tiredness for his team’s patchy performances.<\/p>\n

Their rematch with Jordan, this time for a place in the final, is on Tuesday, giving them four days to recover from their latest comeback.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s more about the mentality,” said Son.<\/p>\n

“I’m playing for my country and there should be no excuses.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DOHA: South Korea’s Asian Cup performances have been dubbed “zombie football” but Son Heung-min says the way they keep coming back to life shows the team have the spirit to go all the way. The Koreans rose from the dead again in Friday’s 2-1 quarter-final victory over Australia, with Son winning a 96th-minute penalty that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.tribune.com.pk\/media\/images\/Son1706974631-0\/Son1706974631-0.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}