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With Ulsan Hyundai FC closing in on their second straight title in Korean football, head coach Hong Myung-bo said Wednesday he is enjoying being chased.Ulsan sit atop the K League 1 tables with 67 points after 33 matches, nine ahead of Pohang Steelers with five matches to go.After 33 matches, the 12 teams in the K League 1 were divided into two groups. The top six ended up in Final A, and the rest were paired into Final B. Clubs will now each play five more matches, one against every other team within their own group, to finish out the season.The top half-dozen clubs gathered in Seoul on Wednesday for the Final A media day, each represented by their head coach and one player. Hong, who coached Ulsan to the top last year for their first title in 17 years, said he wants to do something no other Ulsan bench boss has done before: repeat as K League champions.

“Every match is going to be important from here and on, and our biggest goal is to add one more star above the crest on our left chest,” Hong said. “Every opponent in Final A will be a threat, but we went through this the last couple of years. I think we’ll have the bull’s-eye on our back, and everyone else will be targeting us. But we’ll build on our experience from last year.”Ulsan will open the final stretch against Gwangju FC, an upstart club that stunned Ulsan 2-0 on Sept. 3.”They have no pressure and have nothing to lose. I think they’re going to be in a pretty good mindset,” Hong said. “So it won’t be an easy match for us, but we’d like to wrap up the title as quickly as we can. The best-case scenario would be to get it done within the first couple of matches.”

Mathematically, only Pohang and Gwangju FC, in third place with 54 points, have a chance to catch Ulsan. Pohang head coach Kim Gi-dong said his club has been steadily improving and he doesn’t want the progress to come to a halt at the most important juncture of the season “We’ll have to beat Ulsan to make something happen toward the end,” Kim said of the east coast regional derby scheduled for Nov. 12. “Our supporters always want us to beat 커뮤니티 Ulsan, and a derby like this helps the league overall too. We’ll go all-in on that match and see what happens.”Pohang captain Kim Seung-dae, sounding almost resigned, said the team’s primary goal is to stay in second place, though he will still enjoy trying to chase down the defending champions.

“I think being chased is much more difficult than chasing. This is not so hard on us,” Kim said with a smile. “We’re going to try to push them until the end.”Ulsan captain Kim Kee-hee admitted Pohang are the one team that could foil Ulsan’s repeat bid but added: “We enjoy having someone chasing us. We love wearing the crown on the top of our head, and we don’t take this lightly.”Gwangju FC have been a Cinderella story in 2023, soaring to third place with five wins in their last six matches during their first season following promotion from the second-tier K League 2. “We’ve all grown so much this year, the club, players and myself,” Gwangju coach Lee Jung-hyo said. “And we’ve made a lot of noise along the way, and we want to continue to make noise in the final stretch.”

Lee’s captain, Ahn Yong-kyu, chimed in: “We’re excited to be in Final A, but we’re not satisfied with this. We want to keep getting better and make our supporters happy.”Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, a perennial contender with seven league titles between 2014 and 2021, find themselves on the outside looking in, stuck in fourth place with 49 points.Assistant coach Valeriu Bordeanu, in attendance for ailing head coach Dan Petrescu, said he was “glad” that no other coach considered Jeonbuk much of a threat over the next five rounds of matches.”Surprise can happen,” the Romanian coach said. “We face some difficult moments, and we’re very happy to be in the top six. We hope to reach as high as possible in the tables in the final five matches.”

When Daegu FC forward Lee Keun-ho wraps up his 19-year professional football career at the end of this season, there will be one thing and that one thing only on his agenda: spending time with his 8-month-old son.”Raising our boy is the most important thing for me by far,” Lee told reporters Wednesday before the K League 1 media day for Final A clubs, or the top six teams after the 33-match point. Daegu FC snuck in at 49 points, just two ahead of seventh-place FC Seoul. “I enjoy it. I think I was born to do it,” Lee said with a smile. “I am just thankful to be a father, and I appreciate the opportunity to spend time with my son.”The 38-year-old said his decision to retire, made public Monday, didn’t come out of the blue.”I had retirement in mind before the season, and then I started getting into more matches than I’d thought because we had some injuries up front,” Lee said. “My teammates and coaches said I looked better than in years past. And that’s when I decided it was the right time for me to quit.”

Lee just had to convince head coach Choi Won-kwon to let him leave on his own terms. “I first told the coach in June that I wanted to call it quits, but he wanted me to keep playing,” Lee said. “I told him three or four more times in the summer that this was 추천 going to be it for me, but he kept kicking the can down the road to October and November. But after a while, he finally relented because I was so insistent.” Lee said his teammates at first didn’t believe him.”They thought I would just come back next year and play,” Lee said. “I did that the past couple of years. But once they started seeing news articles about my retirement, they really believed me.”Lee said his wife gets emotional whenever the talk of his retirement comes up, and he now tries to avoid the topic as much as he can.

“At first, she used to ask me, ‘Are you going to quit for real this time?’ But after a while, she would cry whenever we talked about my retirement,” Lee said. “She has always been supportive of my decisions, and this was no different. But I try not to bring that up with her.” Lee said coaching is in his long-term future, but he will first have to earn his coaching license to be eligible.”I am not quite ready to get into coaching yet. I have to get my license next year,” he said. “For now, I may open a football academy for children in Daegu. And I will get into coaching when I think I am ready for it. I’ve been playing this game for a long time, but when it comes to coaching, I will be a beginner.”

On the verge of hitting free agency for the second time in his major league career, South Korean pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin was careful not to reveal too much about his future plans Wednesday.Ryu returned home after completing his fourth and likely final season with the Toronto Blue Jays. His four-year, US$80 million contract expired this season, and Ryu will officially become a free agent after the end of the World Series, either at the end of October or early November.

So will Ryu give Major League Baseball (MLB) another shot or return to the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO)?”I don’t know what to tell you at this point,” Ryu told reporters gathered at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. “I think we’ll have to wait and see. Only time will tell.”

Ryu signed that four-year pact with Toronto when he hit the open market for the first time in 2019. He was coming off his best season in the bigs, leading the majors with a 2.32 ERA and finishing second in the National League Cy Young Award voting for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Things are much different this time around. Now 36, Ryu was limited to just 17 starts over the past two seasons, missing the second half of 2022 and then the first half of 2023 seasons after undergoing and recovering from a Tommy John elbow operation.The left-hander pitched to a solid 3.46 ERA in 11 outings this year, going 3-3 while striking out 38 batters in 52 innings.

When asked if he felt he would have had more wins with better luck, Ryu smiled and said, “I just didn’t pitch well enough.”When Ryu had said at the end of last year that he would try to return to the big league mound by the summer of 2023, it raised more than a few eyebrows. Skeptics doubted Ryu would be able to come back at all, let alone pitch as well as he did, at this point in his career.

“When I left home in December, I said I would be ready to come back in the second half of the season, and I am satisfied that I was able to live up to that word,” said Ryu, who made his 2023 season debut on Aug. 1. “I think I did pretty well this season just by returning from the surgery. I think my velocity will tick up a bit next year, but for now, I think I’ve done pretty well this year.”

Though Ryu doesn’t blow by hitters, he can still be effective with his guile. He was particularly effective with slow curveballs and changeups this year, leading to speculation that he could still command a major league deal even at his advanced age and a recent injury history.Whether or not he signs another big league deal this winter, Ryu said he remembers the pledge he’d made with fans of his former club, the Hanwha Eagles of the KBO, that he would end his career there.

“I haven’t changed my mind on that front,” said Ryu, who starred for the Eagles from 2006 to 2012. “I’ll absolutely make that happen.”Ryu said his four years with the Blue Jays “flew by faster than I’d expected.” His first season there was cut short from 162 스포츠 games to 60 games due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of travel restrictions in Canada, the Blue Jays were forced to play their home games in their minor league facilities in Dunedin, Florida, and Buffalo, New York.

The Blue Jays reached the postseason in two of Ryu’s four seasons there. In 2020, he was the losing pitcher against the Tampa Bay Rays in the deciding Game 2 of an expanded Wild Card Series, after allowing seven runs — only three earned — on eight hits and two homers in 1 2/3 innings.Ryu never got a shot at his postseason redemption. The Jays qualified for the Wild Card Series this year, but Ryu didn’t make the team’s roster for the showdown against the Minnesota Twins.

Ryu, as the team’s No. 5 starter, wasn’t going to start in the best-of-three series, and with only one career relief appearance, he wouldn’t have been an option in the bullpen, either. The Blue Jays lost the first two games to take a quick exit from the postseason.”I completely understood the situation,” Ryu said of his exclusion from the postseason. “But I was preparing to pitch in the later rounds after the Wild Card Series. It would have been nice if the team had kept winning, but it didn’t happen.”

Ryu watched helplessly as the Jays dropped Game 2 against the Twins 2-0 after a controversial decision. Toronto starter Jose Berrios got pulled with no out in the fourth inning of what was then a scoreless game. The Blue Jays instead chose left-handed starter Yusei Kikuchi to come out of the pen, but the move backfired as Kikuchi gave up the game’s only two runs in that inning.

“As Berrios himself said, there’s nothing a player can do about that situation. You just have to accept it,” Ryu said. “But from a pitcher’s perspective, it must have been disappointing. It was still early in the game, and he hadn’t allowed any runs at that point. But a player can’t do anything about a situation like that.”

In the midst of the Blue Jays’ postseason drama, Ryu said he kept tabs on the South Korean national team’s run to the gold medal at the Asian Games in China earlier this month. A 2010 Asian Games champion himself, Ryu said South Korea’s young players — the national team was built almost entirely of under-24 players — gave the nation “a valuable gift.”

“These are the players who will be leading the country at international competitions in the future,” Ryu said. “I am sure this gold medal will help them a great deal.”One of South Korea’s brightest young stars, Kiwoom Heroes outfielder Lee Jung-hoo, could soon join Ryu in the majors. Lee’s KBO club plans to post the 2022 league MVP for interested MLB clubs this offseason. Lee has been scouted heavily in the past couple of years and offers strong bat-to-ball skills with solid defense.”Everyone knows he’s the best hitter in Korea today,” Ryu said. “If he can find his footing quickly, then I think he’ll be competitive in the majors.”

The Korean baseball league on Thursday unveiled finalists for its inaugural award recognizing excellence in defense.The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) will hand out the KBO Field Award for nine positions: pitcher, catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, left field, center field and right field.

The manager, nine coaches and the general manager from each of the 10 clubs will cast their votes for the next seven days, starting Thursday, and they may not vote for players on their own teams. The fielding index developed by the KBO and its official statistics provider, Sports 2i, will be used as a reference. The official fielding score, which accounts for fielding percentage and range factor, will be used for all nine positions.

For pitchers, fielding bunts and pickoff throws will be considered, while blocking and caught stealing percentage for catchers will come into the equation.Votes by managers and coaches will comprise 75 percent of the selection total, and the fielding 한국을 stats will count for the remaining 25 percent.To become finalists, pitchers must have thrown at least 48 innings and catchers must have appeared in at least 72 games. Infielders and outfielders must have played in at least 720 innings at their respective positions.

Under these criteria, 108 pitchers, 14 catchers, four first basemen, 10 second basemen, nine third basemen, nine shortstops, five left fielders, nine center fielders and seven right fielders will be up for the award.The award ceremony is scheduled for late November. Winner will each receive a trophy and 2 million won ($1,470).

Bucheon Hana One Q selected three rookies at the 2022-2023 WKBL rookie competition. Park Jin-young (178 cm, G) was at the center. Park Jin-young is a versatile player who was selected as the second overall pick. However, he couldn’t play many games due to his injury.

However, Hana OneQ acquired another first-round pick in May 2022 in a trade with Asan Woori Bank. It chose Lee Da-hyun (179 cm, F) as the fifth pick in the first round. Lee has a long shooting distance compared to her height. However, Lee also did not get many chances. 안전한 카지노사이트

Ko Seo-yeon, who was selected as the fifth player in the second round, stepped on the court the most among rookies. She spent an average of 9 minutes and 54 seconds on the court for 19 games and recorded 3.79 points and 1.4 rebounds per game. Her aggressive offense, which has not been recorded, also captivated manager Kim Do-wan and Hana One Q.

Of course, since Hana One Q’s main players and first-round rookies left due to injuries, Ko could get many opportunities. However, it is also difficult to seize the opportunities given. It can be more so for rookies who have no professional experience.

Ko also gained quite a few opportunities during the 2023-2024 season. She averaged 8:48 in 21 regular league games, scoring 2.7 points and 1.8 rebounds per game. And she experienced the playoffs two years after her professional debut. She averaged 2 minutes and 32 seconds in three games.

Ko Seo-yeon said, “(Kim) Jeong-eun joined the team anew, and my experience in the game has increased. So I thought I should focus more than before. That’s why I tried to be more accurate from the small one,” looking back on the 2023-2024 season.

Meanwhile, Ko visited Woori Bank Woori WON 3×3 Triple Jam in 2024 on June 29 and 30. She competed against Japanese players, including Duesseldorf Juice and Toyota Antelopes.

She also has to compete against a Japanese player in Hana One Q. She also has to compete against Yurina Watanabe (166 cm, G) and Yuzuki Ishida (168 cm, G). So, Ko should focus more on her training this off-season.

Ko said, “Japanese players are very fast. They are strong in defense. But in my case, ball control and strength are my weaknesses. I have to practice dribbling a lot, and I have to build up my body more,” explaining what I have to do in the offseason.

After that, he said, “You have to pass fast and run faster. You have to get more accurate in the movement of sending and running,” adding, “I thought it would be an option to install fast ball flow.”

Finally, he said, “As Japanese players join, my chances to play may be reduced. But I want to work harder and give the team more strength. At the same time, I want to increase my competitiveness.” Regardless of the Japanese players joining, I thought of ‘team performance’ and ‘individual competitiveness.’

The Changwon LG Twins has reorganized its squad and strengthened its coaching staff. It promoted Kang Byung-hyun, a scout who retired after the 2021-2022 season and spent two seasons as a scout, to a coach.

LG let a single coach train D-League players. After Cho Sang-hyun took the helm of LG, coaches Park Yu-jin and Kim Dong-woo sweated with D-League players for one season at a time. 슬롯사이트 순위

The coach in charge of the D-League did not follow away games during the season but remained in Changwon to lead the training of D-League players.

In other words, three coaches stood by Cho Sang-hyun’s side in Changwon’s home game and two coaches in away games.

From 2024-2025 season, LG will entrust coach Kang Byung-hyun to operate the D League so that head coach Lim Jae-hyun, coach Park Yoo-jin, and coach Kim Dong-woo can assist coach Cho Sang-hyun both at home and away.

The D-League does not play much games. Each team played 10 games last season in the D-League, which involved eight teams. For this reason, a season feels even longer for players who cannot play in a regular league.

LG is also considering participating in the 3×3 basketball tournament if the schedule fits to motivate D-League players.

I met coach Kang Byung-hyun, who has been benched in D-League games for the past two seasons, and heard how he felt about being promoted to coach.