The Korea Football Association (KFA)’s plan to improve the national team’s medical operation system has been revealed.
On the 17th, KFA announced plans to improve the national team’s medical management system through its official website.
At the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, which was held in December last year, KFA suffered from measles due to the ‘2701 Controversy’. It was because Ahn Deok-soo, a personal trainer hired by Son Heung-min (Tottenham Hotspur), posted an exposé on social media.
During the Qatar World Cup, Ahn, who is known to have stayed in the same accommodation as Korean players and took care of the players’ bodies, moved separately from the KFA medical team, and it is said that Son Heung-min and the team paid for the accommodation support.
At the time, “No. 2701 has nothing to do with the Korea Football Association. If you find out the identity of No. 2701, you will never criticize the players. Please reflect on this incident and improve it so that the future of Korean football will be. As a person who has spent close to 10 years, I couldn’t help but think about the future of Korean football,” said Ahn, who later took no particular position. Then, the KFA directly refuted the related controversy in January, and in the process, it was revealed that Ahn did not have a medical staff license recognized by the KFA.
However, this incident also revealed a number of problems with the KFA medical team, and the KFA promised to come up with an improvement plan for that area by March. And on this day, KFA finally revealed the process and future direction for improving the national team’s medical management system.
The following is KFA’s official improvement plan statement.
The Korea Football Association has revealed the circumstances and position of the incident in relation to the mandatory trainer issue that occurred during the Qatar World Cup through a statement posted on this website in January.
Among the contents of the announcement at the time, there was also a promise to come up with an improvement plan until the national team convening in March. Therefore, we would like to tell you about the progress and future direction for improving the national team’s medical management system.
First of all, in order to refer to overseas cases that seem to have experienced similar situations, in January, we contacted the Football Associations of England, Germany, Japan, and Australia to investigate their respective operating policies.
As a result, none of the four countries accepted the player’s personal duty trainer as official staff within the national team. Therefore, we confirmed that we do not pay personal trainers, nor do we provide AD cards for access to national team accommodations.
However, there were some differences in the operation method depending on the situation in each country. Some countries, such as Australia, completely ban contact between players and personal trainers during the call-up period, while others, such as Germany and Japan, allow contact only during extremely limited times in a completely separate space away from the national team’s accommodation. England also basically does not allow it, but when there is a special decision, it was approved to be treated only for a set time in the player’s personal room as an exception.
In early February, the Korea Football Association Medical Subcommittee (Chairman Seo Dong-won) was held to discuss ways to improve. Based on the results of the medical subcommittee meeting, a meeting was held at the end of February attended by key executives of the association and heads of related departments. In this capacity, future improvements were drafted.
After the appointment of manager Jurgen Klinsmann in early March, we delivered the contents of the Qatar World Cup incident and listened to the manager’s opinion. Director Klinsman said, “I know that similar problems are occurring in many countries around the world. Based on the laws of the Korean government, the Korea Football Association has fully recognized and respected the conclusion reached after much discussion.” 스포츠토토
In addition, we delivered the association’s improvement plan to about 10 middle-aged and veteran players who recently participated in the Qatar World Cup and asked for their feedback. Most of the players who responded did not express their pros and cons clearly, but expressed the opinion that “I would like to have more discussions during the national team convocation period this March.”
Through this process, the Korea Football Association established a direction to improve the national team’s mandatory activities in the future. There is still a process of further discussion with the representative players, so it can be supplemented, but the principles and directions set by the association in the big picture are as follows.
