Hong Myung-bo

Hong Myung-bo is, by some measures, the greatest Asian footballer of his era and is now back in the manager’s chair he resigned from in disgrace twelve years ago. As a player, he was the captain and sweeper of the South Korean side that reached the 2002 World Cup semi-finals on home soil — the only Asian nation ever to do so — and finished third in the Ballon d’Or-equivalent FIFA Bronze Ball voting. He earned 136 caps, played at four World Cups (1990, 1994, 1998, 2002), and is enshrined in Asian football history alongside Cha Bum-kun. His move into coaching took him through the South Korea U-23s (bronze at London 2012 after that immortal playoff win over Japan) and then up to the senior job in 2013, which ended after a torrid 2014 World Cup in Brazil — three group-stage games, no wins, only one goal scored, and a national tabloid scandal involving criticism over selection of his former Pohang player Park Chu-young.

Hong rebuilt his coaching reputation patiently. After a brief, unhappy 2017-18 in the Chinese second tier with Hangzhou Greentown, he returned to Korea in December 2020 to take charge of Ulsan Hyundai. What followed was statistical proof that 2014 had been an aberration: a second-place K League finish in 2021, then back-to-back league titles in 2022 and 2023 — Ulsan’s first championships in 17 years — plus an AFC Champions League final in 2022. By the time the Korean Football Association came calling in July 2024 (replacing the underwhelming German interim Jürgen Klinsmann), Hong had banked unimpeachable domestic credibility.

His tactical preference is a 4-2-3-1 with a clear hierarchy: Hwang In-beom and Paik Seung-ho hold; Son drifts in from the left half-space; Lee Kang-in conducts from a central 10 role; and Hwang Hee-chan attacks the right channel. He’s more pragmatic than his 2013-14 self, having seen at Ulsan what bus-parking opponents in the Asian Champions League can do to over-committed possession teams. He defers heavily to Son as captain — visibly — and that working relationship has been quietly tested during qualifying when Korea drew three matches in a row against ostensibly weaker AFC opposition and pundits started suggesting Son should drop deeper. Hong refused, and the team eventually finished its third-round group unbeaten with six wins and four draws.

The personal redemption arc is unmistakable. Hong has spoken in Korean-language interviews about 2014 as “the lowest point of my football life” and about treating 2026 as “the one I owe the country.” He is the only manager in this World Cup who played at the host country in his own playing era (he played at the 1994 World Cup in the USA), and that quiet familiarity with the climate has informed his decision to set up a pre-tournament training camp in Salt Lake City from 18 May for altitude acclimatisation. The realistic ceiling for him is the Round of 16, which would be a respectable bookend to his coaching career — at 57 with two K League titles and the World Cup spot already in the bank, he could plausibly walk away from international football after this regardless of outcome.