South Korea’s German coach Jurgen Klinsmann. AFP
Doha, Qatar: South Korea coach Jurgen Klinsmann heralded his team’s fighting spirit after the Taeguk Warriors salvaged a 2-2 with Jordan on Saturday through Yazan Al Arab’s late own goal in their AFC Asian Cup Qatar 2023 Group B tie.
The Jordanians succumbed following a prolonged period of sustained Korean pressure to give up the equaliser in the 91st minute having been on the cusp of a famous win against the two-time AFC Asian Cup winners.
Son Heung-min had given the Koreans a ninth minute lead from the penalty spot but Park Yong-woo’s own goal and a strike from distance by Yazan Al Naimat in first half injury time meant Klinsmann’s side were forced to launch a second half fightback to share the points.
“I was very pleased today with the reaction when we were 2-1 down,” said Klinsmann.
“In the last seven, eight games we’ve won every game and you can lose the feeling when you are a goal down and this was very important.
“Today the team had to swallow that Jordan went up 2-1 and had to react then and come back and the reaction was very positive. We had enough chances to win the game and Jordan had chances as well."
The result leaves the teams level on four points from their opening two Group E games and both are well placed for a place in the next round.
“We expected a difficult game and we got a difficult game,” said Klinsmann.
“We’ve got to give Jordan a huge compliment for their overall performance, but especially in the first half.”
The Jordanians successfully held off Korean efforts to equalise for the 45 minutes of the second half, but in the first minute of added time Al Arab clipped the ball over goalkeeper Yazeed Abdulaila following Hwang In-beom’s shot to hand Klinsmann’s side a point.
After going so close to securing a win against a nation listed 64 spots above his team on the FIFA Rankings, the performance pleased Jordan coach Lhoussanine Ammouta.
“We were expecting it to be a difficult game, you have a team that is very experienced at global and continental level but we have to raise the hands to all the team individually and collectively for the effort they put in,” he said.
“It’s normal to make mistakes at the beginning and at end of the match. You are talking about a rival that is taking excellent decisions on the offence.
“We spared no effort to preserve the result. Eventually we think this is a positive result. The most important thing to identify is the trust we got from the team, this high spirit that will allow us to go forward in the plan we drafted for ourselves.”
