South Korea’s coach Uli Stielike says that he wants the team to have new options going into the match against Uzbekistan in the FIFA World Cup qualifiers.

After having been appointed as the national team’s new coach just after a disappointing World Cup 2014,Uli Stielike managed to guide the team to the brink of the AFC Championship. Host nation Australia managed to defeat South Korea 2-1 in the final, but that aside, the team has been brilliant. This gives South Korea a lot of hope going into the World Cup 2018 qualifiers, which has just begun in the Asian region.

South Korea are one of the strong teams from the Asian part of the world and they are expected to comfortably qualify for the World Cup. However, complacency can be a major issue for the team especially considering that South Korea have been relying upon their older players for a long time. This was widely evident at the World Cup 2014 were South Korea struggled without the experience and quality of former Manchester United midfielder Park Ji sung, who was not part of the tournament.Stielike has tried to introduce new qualities into the team by bringing as much as six players under the age of 27 for the recent matches.

"Players showed great performances as we ended up the Asian Cup in second place.I didn't have to change the roster much. However, we need some of changes as well in order to develop ourselves to become first place, not second place. Kim Bo-kyung is almost a key player in Wigan; Ji Dong-won also played six matches out of seven matches as a starting member as he transferred to Augsburg from [Borussia] Dortmund.I called up two players in order to check their abilities by myself," said the coach.