Football Career Ended at 21, But Lee Joon-seok Rises Again Through Teqball

Lee Joon-seok, captain of the teqball national team, started playing football when he was in elementary school.

Like other friends, he dreamed of wearing the Taegeuk mark and standing on the stages of the Asian Games, the Olympics, and the World Cup.

However, Lee's dream was not easily fulfilled.

Pushed out of fierce competition, he brought his football career to an end at the age of 21 after playing in the K4 League, which is considered the fourth tier of senior football.

Having failed to quench his thirst for wearing the national emblem, Lee transitioned to jokgu, but that path did not work out smoothly either.

At that time, teqball, a nascent sport, caught his eye.

Invented in Hungary in 2012, teqball is a sport where players hit a football back and forth across a specially curved table. It initially gained attention as football players enjoyed it for training purposes, and it began to establish itself as a professional sport when the International Teqball Federation was founded in 2017.

After balancing livelihood jobs with a teqball career, Lee heard the news in February of this year that teqball had belatedly been selected as an official event for the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. Following the news, he resigned from the major corporation where he worked as a contract production worker and dedicated himself entirely to training.

Although the teqball national team could not enter the Jincheon National Training Center like other national athletes and had to prepare for the tournament in poor conditions, Lee's dream of winning a medal was no different from athletes in other sports.

Lee's stage shifted to a teqball table about 1/1,400th the size of a football field, but his yearning for a medal was by no means small.

"When I first started teqball, my mother bought me a teqball table for a huge sum of 2 million won despite our difficult financial situation," Lee said.

"I prepared for this tournament thinking of my mother, and I endured with the determination to win a medal no matter what," he added.

Ahead of the tournament, Lee used his own money to travel to Hungary, where he randomly contacted Hungarian players through social media to receive private tutoring.

Lee was desperate.

"I thought that winning a medal in this tournament would help widely publicize the sport of teqball and create a stepping stone for colleagues who, like me, gave up their livelihoods to plunge into this sport, allowing them to continue their athletic careers without worry," he explained.

Lee passed the group stage undefeated without dropping a single set, and secured his ticket to the final when his semifinal opponent, Zaid Eidan, retired due to a left thigh muscle tear during the match held on the 19th.

Lee stood on the stage of his dreams.

In the men's singles teqball final of the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games held at the Nagoya Higashi Sports Center in Japan on the 20th, he faced off against Iraq's powerhouse Ali Dheyaa Mzher, who had been considered a favorite for the title.

Although he seemed to fall behind by conceding three consecutive points early in the first set, he regained his concentration and secured a 2-0 victory in set scores with flawless match management.

It was the moment his eagerly desired dream came true.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.