South Korean footballers selected for the 2018 FIFA World Cup will likely enjoy the most comfortable stay in the national team's history as they will get their own rooms throughout the tournament.
The Korea Football Association said Friday that the members of the men's national football team will not have to share rooms in Russia. During the 2018 World Cup, South Korea will stay at the New Peterhof hotel in Saint Petersburg.
The KFA said the national players for the 2018 World Cup will have the longest period of time to train without having a roommate in their living quarters. Excluding the 2002 World Cup, where South Korea served as the co-host of the tournament with Japan, the national football team players always shared rooms with teammates through the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
South Korea will stay at the New Peterhof hotel in Saint Petersburg. (Yonhap)
For the 2014 World Cup, South Korean players did get their own rooms in Brazil, but they had to use twin rooms with teammates during their pre-World Cup training camp in Miami.
The KFA said the national team players are already enjoying having their own rooms at the National Football Center in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, where they have been training since Monday.
The NFC has 74 rooms for residential accommodation, and the KFA said 26 players who are on South Korea's provisional World Cup squad have their own rooms. The KFA added that the "one player-one room" benefit only applies to the senior national team.
Each player and national team staff gets the same size room, but head coach Shin Tae-yong is living in a bigger room, the KFA said.
The national team will stay at the NFC until Saturday and move to Daegu to play a friendly match against Honduras on Monday. During their stay in Daegu, South Korean footballers will have roommates for the first and last time in their World Cup preparations, according to the KFA.
The players will spend four days and three nights in Daegu before they travel to Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, for a friendly match against Bosnia and Herzegovina on Friday.
"We originally planned two players sharing one room for next week's friendly matches, but since our team hotel in Jeonju had small twin rooms, we decided to provide single rooms for each player," a KFA official said. "This means that the national team players will have roommates only during their four-day stay in Daegu."
South Korea are scheduled to fly to their pre-World Cup training camp in Austria on June 3 before landing in Saint Petersburg on June 12. During their Austria visit, the national team will also provide a single room to each player. (Yonhap)