Photos - Incheon United Soccer

We attended the home opener game of Incheon United FC (Football Club) vs. the Chunnam Dragons at the Incheon World Cup Stadium. Regular season games don't attract much of a crowd in Korea, and it's hard to fill up a World Cup Stadium, but the stadium did well on this day, running at about 60% capacity. Thanks to GM Daewoo being the primary sponsor of the team, we saw the whole thing from a suite right at mid-field. We all had fun and it was a beautiful day.

Also, I learned a few things about soccer:

1) It's more fun to watch than I expected and the fact that the clock doesn't stop for anything until the end of the game is a great idea all sports should use.

2) It really stinks when the home team scores in the first 20 seconds of the game and that turns out to be the only goal of the game. Great that Incheon won, but a bit more scoring would have gone a long way.

3) If you are playing soccer and an opposing player makes any contact with you at all you must collapse to the ground like you were shot and roll-about holding your leg even if the contact was only in the upper body. I am fairly certain this is a rule for advanced players and not an attempt to con the ref into penalizing the other team needlessly. If it is the later, then Korean teams are really bad at fooling the refs because they never fell for it.

Did I mention that Incheon won 1-0.  Good game!

Ariel view of stadium (borrowed from team web site)

The gate to the stadium

Exterior of stadium

The home fan club end of the field with the Jumbo-tron.

Displaying the Incheon United FC banner in the opening ceremony.

Displaying the Chunnam Dragons' banner in the opening ceremony.

Singing of the Korean National Anthem.

Playing of the game (game pictures are boring).

Fans brought home team colored smoke bombs, flares, fireworks, etc and lit them off in the crowd. Don't think you'll see this in the US anytime soon. A wee bit of a safety hazard in a crowded place.