The K League 1 2024 season has completed its first round of professional soccer. While defending champion Ulsan HD performed as expected before the start of the season, FC Seoul and Jeonbuk Hyundai, two of the top three teams in the league, struggled.
The Hana Bank K League 1 2024 has now reached the 11th round as of September 9th.
Ten clubs have played 11 league matches, with the exception of Ulsan, who played one less match due to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League (ACL) schedule for the 2023-2024 season, and their opponents Gwangju FC.
All 12 clubs in the K League 1 play three round robins (against 11 other clubs) to determine the regular league standings.
The top six teams are then categorized into Final A (top split), while the bottom six clubs are in Final B (bottom split).
Each team then enters the Final Pound (split round), where they play five head-to-head matches to determine their final placement.
Once a team is categorized as Final B, it cannot move up more than seventh place, even if its final points total is higher than that of a Final A team.
With the split schedule, 바카라사이트 it’s important to rack up points as early in the season as possible. The first round robin will be key.
This season’s K League 1 was rated as a three-way tiebreaker before kickoff.
At the pre-kickoff media day, the head coaches of each club predicted a strong showing from Ulsan, Jeonbuk, and Seoul with Kim Ki-dong at the helm. They also predicted fierce competition among the nine upwardly leveled clubs. While the leveled playing field was correct, the top three did not go as expected.
Ulsan has lived up to expectations. Despite a mid-season ACL loss to Yokohama F.Marinos (Japan) that knocked them out of the semifinals, the defending champions are sitting atop the standings.
With one game less to play, they have 23 points, trailing only Pohang Steelers (24). They are in a position to take the lead on their own.
Seoul and Jeonbuk, on the other hand, are underperforming, sitting in ninth and 10th place, respectively.
Seoul was highly anticipated due to the arrival of head coach Kim Ki-dong, who proved his leadership skills in Pohang, as well as the addition of Jesse Lingard (England), who is considered to be the best foreign player in the history of the K League.
In addition, the team strengthened across all positions, including Kang Sang-woo, Choi Joon, Ryu Jae-moon, and Sulaka, making them one of the favorites to win the title. However, with three wins, three draws, and five losses (12 points), they remain in the bottom half of the table.
It is widely believed that Kim’s style of soccer has yet to fully take hold in Seoul.
Jeonbuk’s situation is even worse.
Coach Park Won-jae has been leading the team as acting head coach since Romanian coach Dan Petrescu was sacked on March 6 for poor performance, but the team hasn’t rebounded much.
Without a new coach quickly, the team has lost a lot of points early in the season and is now worried about staying up, let alone winning the title.
According to soccer circles, Jeonbuk is reportedly planning to appoint a new coach before the middle of this month at the latest, but it will take time for the team to rebound considering the new coach’s adjustment.
While Seoul and Jeonbuk have been struggling, there have been some unexpected steps forward by other teams.
Pohang, who were expected to take time to fill the void left by Kim Ki-dong, have quickly settled into Park Tae-ha’s system and are currently leading the league.
The team’s dramatic play has earned them the nickname “Taeha Drama” (Park Tae-ha + Daeha Drama).
Gimcheon Sangmu, 사설 토토사이트 who won the K-League 2 title last season, has also been playing well with the national team.
With the addition of Lee Dong-kyung, the league’s joint top scorer (7 goals), the team is expected to continue its upward trend.
Gangwon FC and Suwon FC, who struggled to survive the relegation zone last season, are also making waves early in the season, sitting in fourth and fifth place respectively.
It will be interesting to see where the top three will be at the end of the second robin, and where the early risers will sit in the standings.