Birmingham's Paik Seung-ho scores first Championship goal but club falls to League One

Paik Seung-ho [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Paik Seung-ho scored the winner to lead Birmingham City to a 1-0 win over Norwich City in the last 2023-24 Championship fixture on Saturday, but his side still faces relegation to League One after finishing in 22nd place on the 24-team table.

Paik scored his first goal for Birmingham in the 55th minute at St Andrew's in Birmingham, England, which later turned out to be the sole goal of the match that sealed three points for his side.

Despite the three points, 22nd-place Birmingham faced relegation to the third division. In the Championship, the bottom three teams are relegated to League One.

Alongside Birmingham, 23rd-place Huddersfield Town and last-place Rotherham United also face relegation.

This is the first time that Birmingham has faced relegation to the third tier in 29 years.

Birmingham’s relegation comes in Paik’s debut season with the club. Generally playing as a center midfielder, Paik, 27, joined Birmingham on a two-and-a-half-year deal in January from K League 1 team Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors after spending his formative years bouncing around Europe.

Coming up through the Barcelona youth system — he originally joined the U-13 team in 2010 — Paik struggled to see much game time with the Spanish club, falling foul of FIFA’s Article 19 “Protection of Minors” policy and ending up benched for years.

He eventually made two appearances for Barcelona’s B team before being traded to Girona in 2017. He made 54 appearances for reserve team Peralada and just six for Girona before joining 2. Bundesliga side Darmstadt 98 in 2019.

Paik saw some success in his early days with Darmstadt, racking up 45 appearances and three goals over two seasons, but his pitch time decreased over time and he was eventually released in the middle of his second season with the club.

Things did not immediately improve when he returned to Korea. Paik joined Jeonbuk in the spring of 2021 but was then dropped from the Korean U-23 squad two months later — as was fellow Barcelona-trainee-turned-European-dropout Lee Seung-woo.

But Paik turned things around when he arrived in the K League, carving out a spot in the center of the Jeonbuk midfield and winning the title in 2021 and the Korean FA Cup in 2022.

Birmingham’s relegation to League One leaves Stoke City midfielder Bae Jun-ho as the only Korean player in the Championship.

Stoke, meanwhile, finished in 17th place after a 4-0 win over Bristol City on Saturday.

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