After being eliminated in the round of 32 at the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America, Japan immediately decided to retain its incumbent coach, Hajime Moriyasu. The decision reflected the judgment that, while the team failed to achieve the desired result at a tournament it entered aiming to win, it confirmed sufficient potential in terms of performance. His contract runs until the Asian Cup next January. The federation's position is that it will review a possible change of coach depending on that result. It is a course of action that stands in sharp contrast to Korean football, which has been wandering through a fog since its shocking elimination in the World Cup group stage.
The first step for a leap forward in Korean football is a "principled" appointment of the national team coach. Time and again, the coaching issue has surfaced during crises: the disastrous failure of Hong Myung-bo's first tenure at the 2014 Brazil World Cup, and the discord that erupted during the appointment processes of former coach Jürgen Klinsmann and former coach Hong. In particular, the recent appointment of former coach Hong confirmed that opaque and unfair selection procedures and processes fail to win public support. A sense of crisis is gripping the entire football community, with the fear that if public support for football disappears, not only the national team but the whole of domestic football could be shaken.
There is a need to benchmark the five-stage process that football powerhouses such as Germany and England use as their standard for appointing a coach. They first define in advance the capabilities and qualities required of the national team coach, then conduct independent vetting of a candidate pool and multifaceted in-depth interviews, led by a technical committee. After that, they complete a review of budget feasibility through the board of directors before announcing the official results via a press conference.
In some corners of the football community, the view that the appointment should be rushed is gaining traction. The logic is that fan support can be recovered only by producing results as quickly as possible at international competitions such as next January's Asian Cup. But rushing without a fair and transparent process will only prove to be poison. Immediate results cannot cover up everything. Even if it means giving up on the Asian Cup, a definite cure is more important. What the next national team coach selection requires is not speed, but establishing a rational selection procedure and verifying candidates thoroughly and objectively.
