Korea to face Bahrain, Thailand and Kuwait at Asian Games

The U-24 football team trains at the Paju National Football Center in Paju, Gyeonggi on Tuesday. [NEWS1]

Korea will face Bahrain, Thailand and Kuwait in Group E of the Hangzhou Asian Games.

A total of 23 countries, drawn into six groups on Thursday, will compete in the Asiad. Group D includes three countries, while Group A, B, C, E and F have four countries apiece.

Group winners and runners-up, in addition to the four best third-placed teams, will advance to the round of 16.

“The teams we are facing in the group stage are all at a similar level,” U-24 manager Hwang Sun-hong said through the Korea Football Association after the draw on Thursday. “We will work to top the group.”

Korea have been the most successful team in the Asiad in the past decade, having won back-to-back gold medals in 2014 and 2018, granting the players involved an exemption from mandatory military service.

Son Heung-min of Tottenham Hotspur and Kim Min-jae of Bayern Munich both earned their exemptions from the 2018 tournament.

This year’s Asiad squad includes the likes of Lee Kang-in of Paris Saint-Germain — pending the Ligue 1 club agreeing to release him for the tournament — and Jeong Woo-yeong of VfB Stuttgart, neither of whom have a military service exemption.

The U-24 team this year takes the place of the more traditional U-23, as the age limit has been raised for this year's Asiad due to the tournament's one-year postponement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Asian Games will start in Hangzhou, China on Sept. 23.

BY PAIK JI-HWAN [paik.jihwan@joongang.co.kr]