South Korea’s Ballers Stole The Show

One thing that's always fun at a World Cup is a good old-fashioned clash of styles. With so many different teams, and so many different managers and tactics and players, no two sides play quite alike, and so a central tension of any match becomes the stylistic conflict. Imagine my delight when it took only the second match of this tournament to find what could very well prove the summer's starkest contrast of styles, as South Korea's Real Hooper Shit ran headfirst into the Czechia set piece wall and, somehow some way, came out ahead 2-1, thanks to the power of having better players playing better.

Both of these teams have well-established identities, and given that it was the first match of the tournament for both, there was no reason to veer from the default gameplan just yet. For South Korea, that meant a wide-open 3-4-2-1 formation that gave the side's technical players plenty of space and options with which to work their magic. For Czechia, it meant almost the exact opposite, despite an almost exactly equivalent 3-4-2-1 formation; the Czechs were rigid and compact, aiming to utilize not so much individual brilliance but more the blunt-force instrument of crosses and set pieces.

If I seem biased towards one of those styles, well, yes, I will admit that it was significantly more fun to watch South Korea attempt to score on the Czech defense than the reverse. Surprisingly, that had little to do with Korean icon Son Heung-min; the LAFC-by-way-of-Tottenham forward didn't have his best game on Thursday night, and continued his bizarre run of goal deficiency in 2026 (only two goals since the new year for both club and country), duffing some classic Son chances with mishit shots. Instead of working through its star, then, South Korea turned to two midfielders who came into the tournament looking to break out and break through into the global consciousness, and by god did they.

Let's start with the more subtle yet possibly more dominant performance, that of Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Lee Kang-in. The 25-year-old came into the World Cup as South Korea's most heralded creative force, and he showed why against a Czechia side that had no answer for his close dribbling or his long, looping cross-field balls from a sniper's left foot. Lee consistently put Czech defenders on their back foot as he dribbled directly at them over and over before feinting and cutting back-and-forth. It became impossible to predict where Lee would go with the ball once he received it on the right wing and cut inside. He created chances at will, and forced two brilliant saves from goalie Matej Kovar, in the 14th and 49th minutes. Lee's biggest impact, though, would come on the assisting end, and it would help facilitate not just South Korea's eventual victory, but the showcase of one of his teammates.

That teammate would be Feyenoord's Hwang In-beom, scorer of the best goal of the tournament through two matches. (I know, that's not saying much just yet, but the goal was so good that I expect it to hold a place near the top of the tournament's best strikes list at the end.) Normally a more reserved midfielder, oftentimes playing as the deepest pivot, Hwang has been given freedom in this hyper-attacking Korean side to slide on up and put defenders on skates if the opportunity arises. Sure enough, eight minutes after Czechia scored an out-of-nowhere opener in the 59th minute—via, quite unsurprisingly, a throw-in set piece—Hwang made a run from the left-center of the attacking third, giving Lee plenty of space to land a teardrop ball in between two Czech defenders and an on-charging Kovar. It looked like Hwang would either have to force a shot through traffic or just cycle the ball back out, as well covered as he was, but instead the 29-year-old used his first touch to stop the ball and roll it over from left foot to right, completely wrong-footing both center back Robin Hranac and Kovar. He then hit an audacious chip around the goalie's arm to bounce the ball into the far side of the net.

Let's look at it from another angle to really admire the cutback, because wow:

Things had been a tad shaky for South Korea in the first hour of the game. All of its possession and dangerous attacks had led to nothing. Add in the goal against the run of play from Czechia, and the match looked like it might get away from them. So, it's no exaggeration to say that Hwang's goal not only turned the tide of the match, but in fact might have turned the tide entirely in Group A. After the equalizer, South Korea felt more in control even with its brand of chaotic offense, and Czechia retreated more and more into its shell, hoping for another moment of pre-scripted efficiency. It nearly got that moment, too. In the 78th minute, Tomas Soucek latched onto a free kick from Michal Sadilek and put it in the back of the net, but the West Ham center back was ruled to be offside, and the score stayed 1-1. Not for long, though.

Two minutes after Soucek's disallowed goal, South Korea grabbed the next and final goal. Once again, Hwang was the central man. Paik Seung-ho hit a (rather beautiful) long through ball that found the goalscorer out on the wing—again, he was given plenty of freedom to improvise and move around the formation as needed, and it's impressive that the two goals he was involved in came from opposite sides of the field. Hwang out-raced Jaroslav Zeleny to the ball and then used his first touch this time to hit a low cutback to Oh Hyeon-gyu in the box, who then converted:

Czechia would get two more clear chances to equalize, in the 82nd and 94th minutes, but Korean goalie Kim Seung-Gyu saved both superbly, allowing South Korea to spoil Czechia's return to the World Cup after 20 years away. If the opening match of the World Cup, Mexico's red-card laden 2-0 victory over a poor South Africa, was a sour appetizer, the night game, featuring two teams with plenty of space to grow and enough talent to entertain, even if one of them didn't seem interested in that, was a delicious dessert, 90-plus minutes of high-octane tension of the kind that only the World Cup can bring about. Out of that pressure came a diamond in the form of Hwang In-beom, whose two sublime first touches helped secure three all-important points for South Korea and a whole lot of attention for the Tigers of Asia, the World Cup's most engaging side so far.