Hiddink an unlikely hero

PROFILE/Hiddink: Tom Humphries profiles the Dutchman who is now all but venerated in Korea, but who initially found the going far from easy as he strove to bring out the best in a nation - often in spite of itself.

When it came to the great whorl of emotions at the endgame Guus Hiddink was as still and as knowing as he has always been. He walked out to his players and told them again who would be taking the penalties. Then he stood back, slightly apart from everyone as usual, and watched his Korean side score five out of five

It fell to Hong Myung Bo, the team's 32-year-old captain, who has been to three previous World Cups without experiencing a win, to stick the winning penalty past Iker Casillas. Hong Myung Bo is an icon in Korea, but early this year he was told publicly by Hiddink that his place in the squad was far from secure. Impressive CVs didn't matter. "Fine," said the player, "I'll earn it."

This is an example of what has become known as Hiddink style.

"It's time," said its Dutch progenitor after the win against Spain, "for a glass of champagne."

Perhaps it was time too for some humble pie for Hiddink's many detractors in the Korean media who misunderstood and mistrusted the Dutchman's tactics for the last 18 months.

The Koreans have always resisted foreign influence on their football and the K League, unlike its more exotic Japanese counterpart, has no foreign coaches in it. Peeved, however, by the success achieved by their rivals under the stewardship of Phillipe Troussier, the Koreans reluctantly set about looking for a non-national coach to replace Huh Jung-moo in late 2000.

They tried long and hard to lure French Word Cup coach Aime Jacquet, but were quietly rebuffed, which is a pity for lovers of jacket and trousers jokes.

Hiddink was number two on the list and came with a price tag of $1.5 million and a 50 per cent bonus if the team made it to the last 16. The Koreans considered a World Cup record which didn't include a single entry in the win margin and decided that it would be worth it.

The relationship wasn't always happy. Hiddink arrived and was given a list of 50 players he might like to draw from. He soon went outside that list and much to the chagrin of local media began looking for players who were young, strong and fast rather than rewarding established heroes. Representing Korea at soccer had long been as much a political achievement as a sporting one, but Hiddink was oblivious to the nuances as regards who had influence and pull.

He also found that aspects of Korean culture were mitigating against their football. Koreans place a huge emphasis on education and military service in compulsory. Many talented players therefore don't begin professional careers until they are 23 years old. In one of his earliest expeditions as manager Hiddink took a side to Dubai without the services of Park Jin-Sub, their best defender at the time. He had gone off to do his military service.

There were other negatives. Korean players were tactically very naive, and physically they were literally apologetic about tackling hard or fouling when it was needed. Hiddink spoke of the need to make them mean and cynical. In training he did mean and cynical things to them "and they just took it. I told them I needed them to get mad, to be mean back".

On the positive side he was impressed by their technical ability and surprised to find that most of his players were naturally two-footed, a discovery which has been part of the foundation of the tactically fluid outfit he has created.

Hiddink did what he could. He brought with him former Dutch team physical trainer Raymond Verhaijen plus two Dutch assistants, Jan Roelfs (technical coordinator) and Pim Verbeek (assistant manager). Verbeek had worked in Asia before, in the J League.

Hiddink's first job was to tighten the defence, which was poor and badly organised. He switched from 3-5-2 to 4-4-2 and began the search for players who could tackle and concentrate, two areas in which the Korean team was weak. He ended up, to his surprise, with a relatively antiquated back four but one where everybody knows their job (right back Song Chong-gug was a major Hiddink find).

There were other problems, too. Choi Yong Soo, a sensation in the J League, didn't quite suit Hiddink's style, so he has remained a marginal player. Ko Jong Soo, a left-sided player in the Mark Kennedy mould, is seen as possibly the most gifted young Korean player of his generation. He is also one of the wildest. He hasn't featured at all.

Hiddink informed the Korean football Association that he required them to tell the nation's 10 clubs that he would have first call on their players and that the K League would be rescheduled for 2002, leaving him a free four-month run-in to the World Cup.

HIDDINK was remembered in Korea as the manager of the 1998 Dutch World Cup side which hammered Korea 5-0, causing the instant dismissal of manager Cha Bum-keun. When Hiddink's Korean team lost 5-0 to France and then more critically lost by the same margin some months later to the Czech Republic reaction was swift. Hiddink was christened "Oh Dae Young" in the local media: "Mr 5-0".

He had recently signed a 700 million won advertising deal for Samsung Credit cards but the campaign was dropped. There was virulent criticism of Hiddink's inability to speak Korean, about the amount of time he spent with his girlfriend on overseas trips and about his blithely appearing in public with her in conservative Korea.

There were demands that the team spend less time on the road getting beaten and more time at home getting trained.

Hiddink was unflapped. He told the Koreans: "Korea is not one of the world's top footballing countries. Beating Singapore 3-0 would make everyone happy but the players would learn nothing."

So the tour of hard and bitter learning continued. The Koreans travelled everywhere, entertained top teams at the opening of virtually every World Cup stadium in Korea. Went five games at the beginning of this year without a win but learned, learned, learned.

His relationship with local media wasn't so much spiky, as in the Mick McCarthy sense, but non-existent. The criticism seemed not to bother him much and the Korean emphasis on statistics and trends seemed to amuse him. Fifty days before the World Cup began he was asked aggressively at a press conference to put a precise figure on Korea's chances of making the last 16.

"Fifty per cent," he said, "and you can add a point everyday till the World Cup starts."

Hiddink had another ace up his sleeve which his detractors never quite understood. His team, comprised, with one or two exceptions, of players from the backwaters of world football, was able to concentrate exclusively on the World Cup for the past four months. Hiddink was able to coach them physically to be at a peak here and mentally tune them for the moment.

The Argentinians, the French, The Italians, the Spanish, the Germans, even the Portuguese - teams whose players have filled out the rosters of the great clubs of Europe - have brought squads here comprised of many players whose 60-game seasons stretched into the first or second week in May. They have been depleted by injuries and have looked stale and uninventive. That and the hometown advantages (including some bad but scarcely corrupt refereeing decisions) enjoyed by Korea have been the edge which Hiddink counted on.

The world has turned to embrace him. His image is everywhere, his words are quoted by politicians, he is commercial gold again.

Samsung resurrected the Hiddink ads after the national team's World Cup warm-up game against England on May 24th and plans to run them for the next three months. That was Hiddink's only commercial contract to date but suddenly he is bombarded with offers and it is expected that his next deal will break the Korean national record of 800 million won set by Park Chan-Ho, a baseball player with the Texas Rangers in the US.

The Samsung Economic Research Institute has issued an earnest analysis of the potential benefits of "Hiddink leadership", with its "emphasis on basics, unswerving leadership even in times of public criticism".

Heineken, whose sales have increased 15 per cent in Korea over the past few weeks, are planning an ambush campaign around the slogan "Which Country Produces Heineken?" The debate in Korea now concerns how to hold onto Hiddink when the World Cup finishes. Citizenship, honorary doctorates and the naming of streets and squares after him may not be enough.

After a humble start with his local club de Graafschap in Holland the man who has walked the tightrope with Real Madrid and Holland may find that the next great challenge is back in Europe.

In a society which partly through its tradition of military service is overly dependent on those at the top of the hierarchy to produce results, Hiddink's attempts to restructure Korean football from the bottom up have interested his hosts greatly and his legacy will be greater and more lasting than the good times of the past month.