Korea coach fingers Ognenovski as weak link for Australia

DOHA: South Korea are confident they can beat the Socceroos by exploiting what head coach Cho Kwang-Rae believes is a lack of pace and mobility at the heart of the Australian defence.

Cho, a decorated former Korean international who took over the national team just after the last World Cup, believes his quick forwards can run off tall defender Sasa Ognenovski, a player whom they have come across in the K-League for the past couple of seasons.

Nor is he overly concerned about the aerial threat offered by the prolific Tim Cahill, either - although South Korea lost one of their tall first-choice defenders in Kwak Tae-Hwi, who was sent off in their opening 2-1 win over Bahrain and is suspended from the match most pundits believe will determine the outcome of group C at the Asian Cup.
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Limbering up ... striker Harry Kewell stretches during a training session ahead of Australia's group C Asian Cup clash with South Korea on Friday afternoon.

Limbering up ... striker Harry Kewell stretches during a training session ahead of Australia's group C Asian Cup clash with South Korea on Friday afternoon. Photo: Getty Images

Cho simply shrugs, smiles and says: ''We know he is good in the air, we do have many defenders and even though we will miss one starting defender from the previous game we do have good players to come in and cover the position well. When it comes to the individual duel in the air we are quite sure we can cope.''

Ognenovski, who won the Asian Champions League last year playing for Korean club Seongnam, is familiar with many of the players Australia will face but Cho says information gained at club level is very different to what is needed in a tournament such as the Asian Cup.

''I am quite sure that Sasa knows very much about the Korean players and he will give a lot of information, but one thing is for sure. Club level and international level is quite different.''

Cho is more damning in his assessment of how he thinks the Koreans can take advantage of the tall, physically powerful Ognenovski's lack of pace.

''When it comes to the mobility of the players our strikers are a bit better than the Australian defenders,'' Cho said through his translator, team media officer Park Il-Ki.

''When it comes to Sasa's case, when he [Cho] was in charge of Gyeongnam, one of the club teams in Korea, he put fast forwards [into the team] to make it difficult for Sasa … he knew that Sasa had a difficulty with quick forwards,'' Park added.

While the two teams could not have had more dissimilar first-up group assignments earlier this week the Koreans, who beat Australia 3-1 in Seoul the last time the two nations met, in September 2009, are optimistic they are hitting form at the right time.

Australia warmed up for Friday's clash (Saturday, 12.15am, Sydney time) with a stroll-in-the-park victory over an outclassed India, their key forwards, Cahill and Harry Kewell, netting three of the team's four goals.

In a bonus, Holger Osieck's side came through its Asian Cup opener with no injuries and no cards.

With three full days to recover and prepare for the match against the Taeguk Warriors the Socceroos could not be in better shape.

South Korea came through a bruising encounter against Bahrain 2-1 winners after surviving a late penalty which gave the Arab nation some hope that it could salvage an unlikely point.

South Korea finished the game with 10 men after the late dismissal of Kwak, so the win came at a cost.

Still, they dominated proceedings for much of the match and two goals from Koo Ja-Cheol showed that the South Koreans can hit the target, even if the first was a fortunate deflection.

The two goal haul might allay some of the concerns of Korean supporters, who feared that their team might be a little goal shy given the number of inexperienced strikers included in this squad.

Cho believes it is the right formline for this game.

''If they play as well as they did against Bahrain, it will be a good result for us,'' he said after a training session yesterday. ''It would have been much better if we could have avoided the red card and not be missing one player. But it is a good lesson for us to be careful with a referee's decision. In general I was quite happy with the organisation of the team.''

Australia's win over India revealed little except that it gave a glimpse of Osieck's preferred line-up, with Cahill and Kewell playing as the two main strikers and Brett Holman, normally deployed as a ''shadow striker'', playing wide on the left so as to accommodate the inclusion of Mile Jedinak in midfield alongside the industrious Jason Culina.

It would surprise if the same line-up did not start against South Korea.

This Australian side is the most experienced in the competition. The starting line-up contains nine players who started at the last World Cup, and seven who were first-teamers five years ago at the 2006 World Cup.

Still the Koreans are not short on big-match experience either, having made the last 16 of the 2010 World Cup, qualified in 2006 and made the semi-final as hosts in 2002.