“Focus! Concentrate, guys!”
Coach Colin Bell, who leads the Korean women’s national soccer team, approached the players who were warming up laughing and chatting with a firm expression.
The players, who used to warm up by making short passes in all directions using only about ⅛ of the entire field, also sped up due to Coach Bell’s ‘Korean language’.
With the intention of always making quick judgments and passing, director Bell shouted ‘head’ loudly in Korean and pointed his finger at his temple, and there was hardly a smile on his face.
With the first group H match against Colombia approaching in three days, the news of matches between other teams was heard in real time, and they became sensitive to the ‘World Cup atmosphere’.
The women’s soccer team led by coach Bell has been training hard since the 10th in Australia, where the 2023 FIFA World Cup will be held.
The national team, which set up a base camp at the Campbelltown Sports Stadium on the outskirts of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, continued training on the 22nd with the goal of winning against Colombia in the first match.
Officially, the training was scheduled to start at noon local time, but all 25 players, including the 23 players on the final list and ‘preliminary members’ Lee Eun-young (Korea University) and Ko Yu-na (Hwacheon KSPO), showed up on the ground 15 minutes early.
Unlike the northern hemisphere, Campbelltown, where winter is coming, was around 10 degrees Celsius that day, similar to the late autumn weather in Korea. A chilly wind often blew and cooled the sweat of the players.
Perhaps because they successfully finished the ‘high-intensity’ training program advocated by coach Bell, the faces of the players were as clear as the high sky ahead of winter.
With the theory that ‘stamina’ is the only way for Korean players, who are inferior to the world’s strongest players in terms of physique, to gain competitiveness, Coach Bell pushed the players by increasing the intensity of training ahead of this tournament.
Until the 14th, the national team completed physical training twice a day, but recently they refrained from high-intensity training and started preparing for the competition in earnest.
Instead of giving more weight to programs that push physical strength to the limit, such as interval training, they focus on checking organizational skills and improving tactical perfection.
According to an official from the Korea Football Association, the core theme of the training that day was ‘strengthening defense’.
The intention is to improve the overall defensive perfection against Colombia, whose side strikers are fast and are good at counterattacks.
On the 8th, in the evaluation match against ‘Virtual Colombia’ Haiti, the left side collapsed with one opponent’s infiltration pass and allowed the opening goal, so it is essential to strengthen the side defense against Colombia.
However, coach Bell conducted this training privately. It means that we will block the possibility that detailed tactics will be known to the opposing team as much as possible.
For Belho, who is aiming to advance to the round of 16 for the first time in 8 years since the 2015 Canadian tournament, winning 3 points in the first game is the key to the ‘roadmap to the round of 16’, so he will prepare as carefully as possible.
Coach Bell revealed only the first 20 minutes of training before starting a full-scale tactical check.
During these 20 minutes, the pressure on the player with the ball was especially emphasized.
The defense team was coached by Matt Ross and the attack team was coached by coach Bell. Even ’16-year-old’ Casey Eugene Fair (PDA), the youngest player among 32 participating countries, was not free from manager Bell’s scolding.
Before leaving for Australia, at the National Team Training Center (NFC) in Paju, the pair used to stand in the corner and watch the ‘sisters’ conversing in Korean while exchanging passes.메이저놀이터
Players who wanted a pass that changed the direction of the attack to Fair did not hesitate to shout, “Casey! Against, against!”
