Korea’s search for the new men’s national football team head coach has hit a snag after one prominent candidate took a different job, with the clock ticking down on the country’s next World Cup qualifying matches.
Canada Soccer announced Monday (local time) it has hired former Leeds United boss Jesse Marsch as the new bench boss for the men’s national team. Marsch, 50, has also coached Montreal Impact, New York Red Bulls, Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig.
The American tactician was touted as a possible United States head coach last year, and more recently, he was linked with the vacant Korean job.
The Korea Football Association (KFA) has been 커뮤니티 looking for the new men’s head coach since firing Jurgen Klinsmann in February in light of Korea’s semifinal exit at the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup.
For Korea’s two World Cup qualifying matches in March, the KFA had Hwang Sun-hong, who was coaching the men’s under-23 national team at the time, run the senior team’s bench as the temporary head coach.
At the end of April, the KFA had narrowed down the list of its candidates from 11 to three, all of them foreign nationals, with the goal of naming the new coach by early May. Sources confirmed at the time that Marsch was among the finalists. Chung Hae-sung, the KFA executive in charge of the coaching search as head of its National Teams Committee, is believed to have met Marsch in London last month.