Hong Myung-bo's Team Eliminated from World Cup Group Stage

▲ South Korean national team players bow their heads

After three days of agonizing uncertainty, Hong Myung-bo's team has faced the humiliation of being eliminated from the group stage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North and Central America.

The South Korean national football team, led by head coach Hong Myung-bo, fell out of the top eight among third-place teams—the threshold for advancing to the Round of 32—following the results of the Group K matches today (June 28).

Regardless of the remaining Group J match results later today, South Korea's elimination has been confirmed.

This marks the first time in eight years that South Korea has failed to advance past the World Cup group stage, since the 2018 tournament in Russia.

Hong's team had aimed for its third overall and second consecutive Round of 16 appearance on foreign soil, following the 2010 South Africa and 2022 Qatar tournaments, but failed to achieve the goal.

This is the ninth time South Korea has been eliminated in the group stage, following the tournaments in Switzerland (1954), Mexico (1986), Italy (1990), the United States (1994), France (1998), Germany (2006), Brazil (2014), and Russia (2018).

Depending on the results of Group J, South Korea will finish the tournament in 33rd or 34th place.

The number of participating nations was expanded to 48 for this tournament. By the standards of previous tournaments with 32 teams, this is a disastrous performance, effectively failing to qualify for the knockout stage.

Coach Hong, who went from a hero of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup semifinals to an icon of failure after leading the team to one draw and two losses in the 2014 Brazil tournament, now faces another downfall after failing to find success in his second World Cup opportunity as head coach.

Unlike the Brazil tournament, where he took the helm just one year before the event, he had sufficient preparation time for this tournament, having been appointed two years before the opening.

South Korea, placed in Group A, secured a 2-1 comeback victory against the Czech Republic in the first match on June 12. However, in the second match against host nation Mexico on June 19, the team suffered a narrow 0-1 defeat due to a defensive error despite a strong performance.

In the final third match against South Africa held in Monterrey on June 25, after leaving their base camp in Guadalajara, the team suffered a shocking 0-1 defeat following a lackluster performance, leaving Hong's side with only 3 points and dropping them to third place in the group.

South Korea had to anxiously wait for the results of other groups over three days, from June 26 to 29.

Immediately after the match against South Africa, South Korea ranked fourth among the third-place teams, making their chances of advancing to the Round of 32 appear reasonably high.

South Korea could have advanced to the next stage if just three of the favorable scenarios had played out in the subsequent matches across nine groups.

However, as matches in eight groups, including Group K, were played over the following three days, only one favorable result occurred: Spain's victory over Uruguay on June 27.

With Uzbekistan's 1-3 comeback loss to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Group K today, South Korea's elimination was confirmed.

(Photo: Yonhap News)

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