Men’s football aims to win in friendly against Serbia

Head coach Shin Tae-yong hopes to continue the Korean national football team’s momentum with another victory in its friendly match against Serbia.

Korea’s match tonight at Ulsan Munsu Football Stadium against Serbia, ranked 38th, will be the final A match of the season.

Though Korea is scheduled to play in the East Asian Cup in December, and is expected to leave to Europe for off-season training, the Europa league players will be unable to join the team as they aren’t scheduled during the official call-up period by FIFA.

After the friendly match against Serbia, the earliest that Europa league players will be able to join the national team is in March.

“Serbia is a strong team that advanced to the World Cup,” Shin said during a press conference on Monday. “Serbia played a great friendly match against China. They may be too good of a team, but we’ll prepare well to carry-on our strength from the previous friendly match against Colombia. We’ll boost up our confidence level with another great match.”

On Friday, Korea showed great teamwork during its friendly match against Colombia, winning 2-1. However, their match against Serbia is expected to be a lot different, as the players are well ahead in terms of physical condition and teamwork compared to Korea. A win against Colombia was Korea’s first win in six matches and the first for Shin, since he got appointed as head coach in July.

“Generally, we’ll maintain the formation and strategies used against Colombia,” Shin said. “My experiment [during the upcoming friendly] will be changing the players.”

Korea has an all-time head-to-head record of 1-1 against Serbia, having lost 0-1 in 2009 and won 2-1 in 2011.

“We gained confidence from the match against Colombia, but we can’t get too loose,” Ki Sung-yueng said during the press conference.

BY SONG JI-HOON [kang.yoorim@joongang.co.kr]