So, a glut of posts recently. Good? Bad? You decide. Anyway, last week I posted my match of the weekend would be the Mainz 05 – Wolfsburg match as it would feature two Korean players: Park Joo-Ho for Mainz and Koo Ja-Cheol for Wolfsburg. I can't post a really full, in-depth review of their performances since I wasn't able to watch the whole thing due to moving exhaustion and other stuff. But I did watch some of the first half, so I'll just post a few brief thoughts on them.
One of the front runners for the left back spot, Park seems to have established himself as the starting left back for Mainz. A team that has slightly surprisingly jumped out to a 3-0 record early on. Park has started every league match for his new German club which is a pleasant surprise considering how in and out he was at Basel.
From what I saw Park did decently against Wolfsburg. Park's offensive ability has been decent, but he is tagged as being a player who will have the occasional defensive lapse. I didn't see anything major from Park in this match, and hope that he will continue to get time with Mainz. With Yoon Suk-Young still on the bench at QPR and Kim Jin-Su still developing, it'd be nice to have a solid left back again.
Of the two, Koo was who I was more curious about, shifting into a deeper role. He doesn't look too comfortable there yet. I thought some of his running seemed a bit frantic and was his way of trying to get into the game somehow. It doesn't seem to help that Wolfsburg seems to be a more direct team, and the ball often seemed to go from defense to attack without really using the deeper midfielders.
It also didn't help of course that for the second time in three league matches Wolfsburg has had a man sent off (Luis Gustavo this time). Koo was sacrificed shortly after Gustavo picked up his second yellow.
*As a side note, it is pleasing to see that Koo is keeping Japan international (and long time Wolfsburg servant) Hasebe Makoto on the bench.