by STEVE HAN
In February of last year, we blogged about South Korean soccer’s prodigy Lee Seung-woo as the Spanish media began tipping the teenager as the “second coming of Lionel Messi.” The comparison made sense at least from a geographical standpoint as Lee is also developing through the youth ranks of FC Barcelona, one of the biggest professional soccer clubs in the world, just as Messi did.
To say that Lee will replicate Messi’s success is still something of a pipe dream. Lee, 16, has shown enough promise at Barcelona to play for its under-18 team after the club advised him to bypass the under-16 team altogether, but Messi was already playing for Barcelona’s senior team by the time he was Lee’s age. The Argentine then went on to score over 350 goals and won 21 championship trophies.
But at the very least, Lee is on track to become Korean soccer’s brightest star after more than 18 months since KoreAm introduced him to our readers. Playing for South Korea’s under-16 national team this summer, Lee is in a class of his own as he’s leading his country at the 2014 Asian Under-16 Championships. The videos of his two goals at the tournament so far has gone viral among soccer fans around the world let alone Korea. British newspapers the Daily Mail and the Mirror posted the videos and dubbed him a “wonderkid.”
Lee’s game-winning goal versus Thailand, which sets Korea up against Japan in the quarterfinals, was perhaps the best showcase for his talent. Running at full speed towards the opposing goal, Lee flicked a pass from his teammate on his first touch and bunny hopped over two slide-tackling defenders in a split second before firing a shot past the goalkeeper to give Korea the lead just before the halftime mark.
Aside from the goal, Lee also won over the hearts of even more Korean fans during his post-game interview. When asked about the upcoming quarterfinals game against longstanding rival Japan in which the winning team would earn a berth at next year’s Under-17 World Cup, Lee smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said, “As long as we play our game, beating a team at the level of Japan will be easy.”
