Centre-back Choi Seok-hyun (Dankook University) has been named the best player in South Korea’s U-20 squad for the FIFA U-20 World Cup 2023 by an expert from a prestigious South American club.
Ahead of the 2023 U-20 World Cup quarter-finals, ‘Mundial Scout’ released an interim report with analyses up to the quarter-finals. Of the five South Koreans they positively assessed, Choi Seok-hyun was the first to be mentioned and received the most space.토토사이트
The Mundial Scout is an 11-person football talent identification project across six countries led by analyst Felipe Araya, who spent his career at Brazilian Serie A side Santos. Santos produced superstars such as the late Pele and Neymar (31-Paris Saint-Germain).
The ‘Mundial Scout’ report, written in French-Spanish-Portuguese-English, cited Choi’s strengths as ▲ clearing headers in and around the penalty box, which overcomes his height limitation (178 cm) ▲ predicting the next play, which is also required of a central defender in modern football ▲ being a centre-back who can penetrate directly into the midfield with the ball ▲ and filtering the risk of conceding goals.
Unlike other Korean professional players who were noticed by Mundial Scouts, such as Lee Seung-won (Gangwon FC), Bae Seo-joon, and Bae Jun-ho (Daejeon Hana Citizen), who were born in 2003 and are one year younger, Choi received better praise even though he is still an amateur.
At the U-20 World Cup, Choi played full-time in all but the third match of the group stage, which he missed due to accumulating cautions, and helped South Korea reach the semi-finals. His back-to-back goals in the 16-8 quarter-final were the definition of a ‘goal-scoring defender’.
Choi also scored one goal and provided one assist at the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U-20 Championship 2023. His physicality and ability to get involved in goals at the top end of the centre-back position is reminiscent of Sergio Ramos (37-Spain).