(Reuters) – South Korea’s bid for a third straight men’s football gold medal at the Asian Games got off to the perfect start with a 9-0 thrashing of Kuwait on Tuesday but coach Hwang Sun-hong is giving his players little time to enjoy it.
With a more testing group match against Thailand looming on Thursday, Hwang is wary of complacency creeping in after his side ran riot against the Kuwaitis in Jinhua, southwest of host city Hangzhou.
“We’ll pretend this match never happened,” Hwang said after the game, according to Yonhap. “We have even more difficult matches coming up later and we have a long and challenging path ahead of us.”
South Korea, who are looking to become the first country to win three consecutive men’s football titles at the Games, are unlikely to get it quite so easy for the remainder of the tournament with the likes of Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and hosts China gunning for gold.
Hwang’s side could also face North Korea in the last 16 depending on the final group placings.
“We should take some confidence from this match and forget about everything else,” he added. “We have to work even harder the rest of the way. It’s nice to win big but it could come back to haunt us later.”
South Korea’s other Group E rivals, Thailand and Bahrain, drew 1-1 on Tuesday.
Hwang will have even more attacking options available later in the tournament with Lee Kang-in set to arrive from France this week.
The midfielder came on as a late substitute in Paris St Germain’s Champions League match against Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday and is being released by the Ligue 1 side to participate in the Games.
The opening ceremony for the Games, which have been postponed from last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, does not take place until Saturday but several sports began on Tuesday, including football, volleyball, beach volleyball and cricket.
(Reporting by Peter Rutherford in Seoul; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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