‘World Cup hero’ Cho Kyu-seong (25, Jeonbuk Hyundai), who has been seeking to advance to Europe, has decided to stay.
A K-League source said on the 14th, “Cho Kyu-sung has decided to stay in Jeonbuk. I know he made up his mind ahead of the weekend. For now, it seems that there will be no transfer this winter unless there are decisive variables such as big European leagues and large proposals from big clubs.”
While Jeonbuk side also acknowledged the retention of the key goal scorer, Cho Kyu-seong plans to leave for Barcelona, Spain on the 16th with the Jeonbuk team to participate in winter training in preparation for the 2023 season. Most European football 메이저놀이터 winter player transfer markets are closed at the end of this month.
Cho Kyu-seong, who emerged as a star by scoring two goals in the 2022 Qatar World Cup group stage match against Ghana, actively explored Europe until recently. Mainz 05 (Germany), Celtic FC (Scotland), and Minnesota United (USA) sent ‘official proposals’ to Jeonbuk, and among them, Cho Kyu-seong was deeply connected to Mainz.
Cho Kyu-seong, who had excluded Minnesota, a non-European region, from his list of possible destinations early on, was most attracted to Mainz, which started a full-fledged scouting competition starting from Christmas last year. Conditions were also good. Mainz set a basic transfer fee of 3.3 million euros (approximately 4.1 billion won), which is higher than the originally announced 3 million euros (approximately 4.03 billion won), and 50% sell-on (a portion of the transfer fee that occurs when re-transferring) put up
Celtic, which showed interest in Cho Kyu-sung almost at the same time as Mainz, made a similar offer. According to foreign media, the transfer fee was 3 million euros and 50% cell-on was charged. However, there was a crucial difference. In addition to Cho Kyu-sung, Celtic also contacted multiple candidates. Oh Hyun-gyu (22, Suwon Samsung), who accompanied the Qatar World Cup as a preliminary entry for ‘Bentuho’, is one of them, and it is known that a ransom of about 2.5 million euros (about 3.35 billion won) was set. On the other hand, Mainz coach Bo Svensson was active enough to directly contact Cho Kyu-sung.
Accordingly, Mainz was the one who negotiated with Jeonbuk until the latest. In the meantime, Jeonbuk has sent many players abroad, but the fact that it has never gone directly to the European big leagues has caught the situation that it was putting a lot of weight on Mainz. Park Ji-sung, technical director, had direct contact with the Mainz leadership.
At the same time, Jeonbuk also had a close conversation with the player. In this process, Director Park and Coach Sang-Sik Kim emphasized that “major European leagues such as Germany are in season, so winter transfers that seek immediate power can be a bit difficult for players from Asian countries, including Korea,” to adapt to the K League 1 for the 2023 season. (Part 1) After the first half of the year, I suggested that we try again to advance to Europe.
In a situation where there is no perfect answer, Cho Kyu-seong, who had been thinking over and over again, decided to ‘stay for now’ without further thinking about going to Mainz. There are still many variables such as injuries until the summer transfer market, which still has a long time left, and there is no guarantee that big league teams will show interest until then, but we decided that it would be better to stay in Jeonbuk for the time being and seek another opportunity.