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"South Korea's success - Skill, Luck, Fix, or something else?"

A bit of all 4, really.

They have been called the success story of the World Cup, and have knocked out Italy, and now Spain. But what are these freak victories down to? Let's see...

Skill:

Both South Korea and Japan have famously put a lot of training into the tournament, with their foreign manager's organising many friendly matches since no qualification to the World Cup was required. There have definitely been matches where they deserved to win, and matches where they have certainly played well, proving the huge amount of training was worth it.

Luck:

There definitely were times when it wasn't them who got the goals scored, and that other teams just made mistakes. I can't think of much else to say on htis one...

Fix:

Call me paranoiac (sp), but in the Spain and Italy games there did as though something fishy was going on...

In both games, the losing teams had two goals each disallowed from "bad officiating", and they definitely should have been counted.

The referees acted hostile towards the opponents, and were cheerful to the Koreans.

The two refs were Egyptian, a nationality not strong in FIFA therefore easily bribed.

Totti's sending off was ridiculous.

Something else:

The evidence behind this: I don't know much about footie :-D

Well, it can't have entirely be a fix, because then Korea would be in the final....

I think it's a mix of luck, and a lot of hard-work in each game.

If you've watched them play in the finals for the full 90 minutes then you'll have seen how hard-working they really are, just like Ireland were against Spain.

And the luck has come against Spain and Italy - as we all know.
But they still worked very hard in those games, even though they should've definitley lost to Spain!

Luck. That's all I'm gonna say.

South Korea's group matches were good as they won by skill but as for the Italy match and their match against Spain today, these two in my opinion were fixed and I dont think that it was caused by bad reffering as they (S. Korea) had to win somehow. And I also think that Italy are big losers for reacting the way they did, I reckon that they have a right to do so, even Spain should talk with Fifa about those refering decisions in that game.

Match fixing spoils the enjoyment of the game it has made the World Cup resemble WWF wrestling were already a winner has been chosen before the fight.

®eDdY²°°2 wrote:
> I think it's skill,fans, and the climate.
>
> Did you see that guys first goal agaisnt Portugal? And the golden
> goal, goal agaisnt Italy. Now that is skill.

You forgot about the match fixing that is obvious ;0)

I think it's skill,fans, and the climate.

Did you see that guys first goal agaisnt Portugal? And the golden goal, goal agaisnt Italy. Now that is skill.

The linesman and ref in that game were awfull and i hope they get off the fifa list cause it just isnt good anough ;0)

Despite my fixing proposal, I'm not fussed about the result, as although I would have been pleased if Spain finally won the Cup, it would be great to see Korea go all the way.

John Arne Riise wrote:
> I'm not making a big deal of it but people in Spain will be furious

Sorry matey, I didn't mean you in particular - I meant people in general.

I do not think their success has been a fix, just a result of poor refereeing. The decision on the second goal was terrible, as were the other incidents, such as goalkeeper coming off his line. There have been so many bad refereeing decisions in this world cup. Something must be done.