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S. Korean Olympic football team to play in Nov. friendly tournament in Egypt

Oct. 30, 2020 - 15:18 By Yonhap
(Yonhap)
The South Korean men's Olympic football team will play at a friendly tournament in Egypt next month.

The Korea Football Association (KFA) announced Friday that the national under-23 squad, coached by Kim Hak-bum, will face Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the tournament taking place in Cairo.

South Korea will first take on Egypt at 1 a.m. on Nov. 14 (Seoul time) and then Saudi Arabia at 1 a.m. three days later. All three countries have qualified for the Tokyo Olympics. These matches fall during the Nov. 9-17 FIFA international match window.

These will be the first international matches for the U-23 national team since January when they won the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U-23 Championship and booked a spot in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Olympics got postponed to next year and Kim's team hasn't been able to schedule any international matches.

They did play the South Korean men's senior national team in two exhibition matches earlier this month.

"We've decided to take part in the tournament because our U-23 players needed to train and play competitive matches in order to perform well at the Olympics," said the KFA's general secretary, Chun Han-jin. "Facing other Olympic-bound clubs should help us a great deal."

Kim will announce his roster Monday. Kim said Friday that he will not pick players from clubs in the second-division K League 2 that could play in the promotion's playoffs in November. (Yonhap)