South Korea will keen to pull off yet another World Cup 2022 shock when they take on Brazil in last-16 showdown at Stadium 974, on Monday night.
Brazil was supposed to finish the group stage without PSG superstar Neymar, who was suffered the injury in Brazil’s opening 2-0 win over Serbia, which ruled him out of their 1-0 win over Switzerland and the shock defeat by Cameroon, one of a series of injury problems within the squad.
However, South Korea head coach Paulo Bento admitted that he wants Neymar to return to play for Brazil on Monday night.
“It would be hypocritical if I said that it’s better to play against Neymar than without him, but to be fair, I always prefer the best players to be on the field. If not, we hope it’s not because of injury, that’s for sure,” Bento said.
“It will be up to the coach, Tite, to decide whether he’s in the starting line-up if he’s fit to play, and we’ll design the best strategy to play against a great national team that is full of balance and adding more and more talented players.” Bento added.
South Korea came with a difficult group with two strong selections, and in the basin of souls it ranked 2nd in Group H.
However, they beat Portugal in the decisive game, managing to qualify thanks to the greater number of goals scored against Uruguay. Before that, Korea lost to Ghana by 3-2 and started drawing with Celeste in 0-0.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have much time to train, because 72 hours is too little, I doubt any team can do that,” Bento said.
“After physical tiredness, and the emotional fatigue, we let the players rest [on Saturday] and only trained this morning, and of course that’s a burden for the team.” he added.
