South Korea's Park Chu young puts Nigeria out of the football World Cup
After seven appearances and the first time since 2002, South Korea will advance to the second round in the World cup. The team made it to the semi-finals in 2002 when the World Cup was jointly hosted in Japan, but this is the first time on 'foreign soil' the team has advanced to the knockout round. Their next match will be against Uruguay.
"During the game, we conceded the first goal and that was a tough situation," South Korea coach Huh Jung-moo said. "But the players stayed cool and leveled the score." After the final whistle blew, those players on the sidelines rushed on to the field, dancing and hugging their teammates in front of a group of fans waving flags.
The Taeguk Warriors in a 2-2 draw against Nigeria yesterday have made it out of Group A."Our goal was to reach the last 16. We succeeded in doing this for the first time away from home," South Korea captain Park Ji-sung said. "So I'm very happy we accomplished this in South Africa. All of the players know how important this is."
Nigeria took the lead when forward Kalu Uche scored in the 12th minute. Ulche received the ball in a low cross from Chidi Odiah, who beat out two defenders on the right wing to get it to him. Ulche’s goal was scored in close range, much to the excitement of Super Eagle fans. South Korea’s Lee Jung-soo equalized the score in the 38th minute. After failing to head it into the net, Lee recovered fast and kicked it in with his right foot, volleying it past Nigerian keeper Vincent Enyeama. This was Lee’s second goal of the tournament.
Park Chu-young scored next giving South Korea the lead at 49 minutes into the game The team’s captain curled a free kick around the wall and into the net. Park’s goal has been noted as one of the rare free kicks to make it into the goal this tournament. Park tried to score again five minutes later on another free kick, but this time shot wide.
Nigeria’s Yakubu Aiuegbeni tied the game during the 69th minute. His first attempt to score in the 66th minute failed, he missed the net but didn’t give up. Kim Nam-il had fouled Chinedu Obasi and Yakuba took the penalty shot, sending it right into the net.
Nigeria is the second African nation to be eliminated from the World Cup, following host city South Africa, who were eliminated on Tuesday. The South African team won their final match against France. Sadly the victory was not enough to keep them in the World Cup, making them the first host nation in the history of the World Cup to be eliminated before advancing out of the group stage into the second round.
Nigeria coach Lars Lagerback did not hide his disappointment that his team did not advance, "I was disappointed about all the chances," but was proud of how they had played. "The players have done really well. They worked hard over time." Nigeria fought hard in the second half to get one more goal; they dominated in attack with 16 shots, eight of which were on target. This is against South Korea’s four shots on goal out of eight. The Super Eagles just couldn’t get past South Korea’s defence in the end. An interesting statistic shows that Nigeria has the worst losing percentage in the World Cup history when scoring the first goal out of teams with at least two appearances at a cup, and have lost more World Cup matches than any other African nation.
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