‘No rush to name head coach’

Lee Yong-soo, freshly minted as South Korean football’s new technical director, said Monday he is in no rush to fill in the head coaching vacancy on the senior national team.

Lee, 54, was named the new head of the technical committee of the Korea Football Association last Thursday. The committee’s main responsibility is to nominate head coaches for national teams in different age brackets. The position on the senior team has been vacant since Hong Myung-bo resigned earlier this month in the wake of South Korea’s winless exit out of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

At his inaugural press conference at the KFA headquarters in Seoul, Lee said he will take his time to find the right person for the job, even though South Korea has two friendly matches scheduled for early September.

“Trying to fight the clock and name the new coach just to have one for the September matches will certainly not help football in this country,” said Lee, who served in the same role during the 2002 World Cup, when South Korea, a cohost with Japan, reached the semifinals.

“We will be deliberate in bringing the new bench boss on board. We’ll try not to rush things too much,” Lee added.

Korea will host Venezuela on Sept. 5 and Uruguay three days later. Lee said having an interim coach for those matches is a possibility and said he hopes Hong’s replacement will at least be in the stands to watch one of the two games. (Yonhap)