South Korea has made its way into the quarter final round of the U-20 World Cup by defeating Colombia in a nail biting encounter yesterday at Huseyin Avni Aker Stadium. The match got decided through penalty shootouts.

It was really one cracker of a contest. Both the teams put in 100% effort on the ground and provided some great entertainment to the spectators who were out there in the stadium.

At the start of the game, it was Colombia which was looking more aggressive. They were making some good moves and in the 11th minute, they had an opportunity to get ahead. But, the South Korean goalie Lee Chang-Keun didn’t let that happen. With a fine save diving towards his right, he denied Colombia from taking the lead.

Just five minutes later, South Korea opened the scoring against the run of play courtesy of a fabulous strike by Joo-Hoon Song. That goal put some extra pressure on the Colombians. They started looking desperate on the ground.
Colombia came close to equalizing a couple of times in the remaining time of the first half, but, on each of those occasions, they got the placement wrong and the South Korean goalie stopped the ball.

Colombia continued to attack in the second half as well, but, the equalizer wasn’t coming. The Colombian players were finding it tough to slot the ball past the South Korean goalie. Eventually, they managed to do it in the 89th minute, but, the ball came back after hitting the cross bar and the score remained 1-0.

Somehow, in the last minute of the stoppage time, Juan Fernando Quintero scored the equalizer for Colombia and dragged the match into the extra time.

There were no goals scored in the extra time which meant that the game would be decided through shootouts.
Both the teams got their respective first shots right. But, in the second round, both of them missed the target. The culprit for South Korea was Joo-Hoon Song, while, for Argentina, it was Felipe Aguilar.

The next 11 shots were just nailed and in the 8th round of penalties, South Korea was leading by 8-7. The defender of Colombia, Deivy Balanta, missed his next shot and the game was over.