A lot of balls!

27 to be exact! Above is Lee Chung Young, a former FC Seoul winger now plying his trade for Bolton Wanderers FC in the English Premiership. Even though he is just back from a fairly successful World Cup for South Korea, he still had time to come back to World Cup stadium on Saturday and kick/throw 27 signed balls (his old shirt number at FC Seoul) into the crowd in the pouring rain at half-time. What a nice bloke...

The FC Seoul game at home to Chunnam Dragons was probably the highlight of my weekend. I sat in with Ji on Friday night with pizza and we just chilled out. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was out socialising as soon as I could after work every week with the Friday feeling coursing through my veins! Now staying in seems to be the norm. Most of Saturday was spent pottering about, doing my usual bits and bobs. The monsoon rain was quite the spectacle, although it threatened to ruin my plans to go watch the match at 7pm.

I called 1330 (unbelievably handy number you can call up for information on virtually anything - they even settle bets on drunken nights out, although I'm certain they're not happy about it) and they informed me that the game was still on (in spite of torrential rain for two days...) so I headed over. Ji met me in Seokye and we got the subway over together. The pitch was in perfect condition even though the rain continued to pour throughout proceedings. Seoul were good without being great and, although they ran out 1-0 winners, it was a nervy performance. The goal came when Hyun Yong Min crossed for Dejan to lay it off for Ko Yo Han who fired home accurately with a left foot finish. It was his first ever FC Seoul goal... You can check out the highlights here. Chunnam had a free-kick strike the crossbar and possibly bounce over the line in the first-half. I've seen it a few times and I'm still not sure if it was a goal. Goal-line technology anyone?

Our seats for K-League All-Stars V FC Barcelona have been booked so that's something to look forward to on August 4th. I read that no World Cup winners will be here but Messi will. Not overly confident that we'll see much of him but I'm looking forward to seeing the K-League players anyway. Incidentally, I stumbled upon quite an informative English-language website dedicated to Korean football here. I'll certainly be frequenting that from time to time. It's not always easy to keep up with what's going on here with the language barrier.

Derry City beat Shelbourne 2-1 away from home last Friday night to stay 10-points clear so, with FC Seoul currently in 3rd position in the K-League, it's a great football season for me so far! Aside from my own football-related injury, of course. I'm hoping to travel down south next weekend for FC Seoul's away K-League encounter with Gwangju. They are quite an interesting team because they are made up of footballers completing their military service. Annoyingly, it looks as though the game is taking place in Younggwang, not Gwangju, although it might be a good chance to have a sight-seeing trip somewhere new. Be nice to get the camera into action properly for the first time...