Top scorer in K League named to national team

Lee Dong-gook, the leading scorer of the top domestic soccer league this year, on Monday was named to the national team for two upcoming friendly matches.

The Korea Football Association announced a list of eight players from the K League Classic who will represent South Korea versus Venezuela on Sept. 5 and then Uruguay on Sept. 8. Those eight will join 14 players based in foreign leagues who were named to the national squad last week.

The match against Venezuela will be South Korea’s first international contest since the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, where it took a quick exit from the group stage with one draw and two losses.

The status of Lee, 35, had been a hot potato over the past week. The Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors striker leads the K League Classic with 11 goals in 21 matches this year, and is also the league’s all-time leader with 165 goals in 369 matches.

Should Lee take the field in at least one of the two matches, he will join South Korea’s “Century Club,” a list of footballers who have played at least 100 international matches for the country.

Only eight other South Koreans, including retired former captain Park Ji-sung and ex-national team head coach Hong Myung-bo, are members of the club.

Lee’s last international appearance came in June last year, during the final round of the Asian qualification for the FIFA World Cup. Choi Kang-hee, Lee’s long-time coach at Jeonbuk, relied heavily on the forward for offense during his brief stint as the national team boss. Hong, Choi’s successor, never once called up Lee for any of the 16 matches he coached before the World Cup, and left the veteran off the team for the big tournament.

Lee will likely be the featured striker in place of Ulsan Hyundai’s Kim Shin-wook, the reigning K League Classic MVP.

Kim was recently named to South Korea’s Asian Games squad and with the country’s first group stage match scheduled on Sept. 14, players on the Asiad team will be unavailable for the two friendlies. (Yonhap)