"If Son Heung-min retires, will Korea become just a second-tier Southeast Asian side?"... The Vietnam debacle sounds a chilling alarm

[Financial News] The nightmare has become reality. And at the bottom of that fear coils one chilling question.
"If players like Son Heung-min, Kim Min-jae, and Lee Kang-in — these once-in-a-generation outliers — all retire, can we still say Korean football is truly better than Vietnam?"
The disaster witnessed on the 24th in Jeddah was effectively answering, "No." The South Korea national under-23 football team, led by coach Lee Min-sung, lost to a 10-man Vietnam side in a penalty shootout. They took 32 shots and still lost. This was not bad luck. It was clear evidence that the great fall of Korean football has begun.
We always make excuses: "We couldn’t call up our European-based players," "We didn’t have enough time to gel." But look at the Vietnam team they faced. Do they have anyone playing in the Premier League? Do they train in better conditions than the K League? Their Korean coach, Kim Sang-sik, has barely even settled into the job.
Even so, Vietnam won and Korea lost. Vietnam, down to 10 men, held out with sheer grit, while Korea, with 11, looked lost and confused. For Korea, which is ahead of Vietnam in infrastructure, salaries, and systems, to lose this match proves that the "Asian powerhouse" status we have enjoyed was little more than a bubble.
What is even more disheartening is what came right after the defeat. Lee Min-sung said, "The team is not yet complete." That is wrong. This is not kindergarten. This was the AFC Asian Cup, and even the third-place playoff is a stage where results matter. To dress up such poor tactics and preparation — unable even to dominate Vietnam — as part of a "process" is nothing short of deceiving the public.
Against an opponent sitting deep with 10 men, the team failed to produce a single effective solution and instead resorted to launching "61 crosses" — pure brainless football. That is where the South Korea national under-23 football team stands today. This is not a problem that can be fixed simply by changing the coach. It is proof that the entire system for appointing and managing coaches is rotten.

Right now, Korean football is intoxicated by the sweet drug of a so-called "golden generation." We are mesmerized by Son Heung-min winning the Premier League Golden Boot and Lee Kang-in playing for Paris Saint-Germain Football Club (PSG), and in the process we have ignored the fact that the very roots of Korean football are rotting away.
This tournament laid bare those roots — the K League young guns and the youth system. Without Korean players in European leagues, they were toyed with by the Japan U-21 national football team (second team), and they looked worse than China and Vietnam.
A few years from now, when Son Heung-min retires and the overseas-based stars are gone, what will be left? Only the same lifeless players we saw against Vietnam today. In that future, can we still call ourselves the "Asian Tigers" with a straight face? Not a chance. We will be reduced to a mere punching bag.
At this rate, winning gold at the Asian Games in September is out of the question, and earning one of the two tickets to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles looks virtually impossible. Adding a few overseas-based Korean players will not magically restore rotten roots.
The loss to Vietnam is not just another defeat. It is the opening act of a deadly downward spiral in which Korean football could sink to the level of Southeast Asia. The arrogance of thinking, "There’s no way we’ll fall behind Vietnam," is exactly what dragged us into hell today.
Without drastic, soul-searching reforms right now, it may not be long before Korea goes into FIFA World Cup qualifiers genuinely fearing Vietnam and the Kingdom of Thailand. The South Korea national under-23 football team is the final gateway to the senior level. No matter how many Korean players in European leagues are missing, if this is the level of performance, there is no future.
On that night in Jeddah, the future of Korean football was nothing but darkness.
jsi@fnnews.com Jeon Sang-il Reporter