Coach Kim Do-kyun (46), who led the dramatic stay of the K-League 1 Suwon FC, will take the helm of the K-League 2 Seoul E-Land.
According to an official familiar with the situation at the K-League on Wednesday, Kim Do-kyun and Seoul E-Land recently agreed on a contract. Unless significant changes occur in the future, Kim’s appointment as Seoul E-Land coach will be officially announced within a few days.
Seoul E-Land, which was founded in 2014 and has played in the K-League Challenge (currently K-League 2) since the 2015 season, has been seeking promotion every season, but has failed to advance to the K-League 1 stage for the ninth season. First coach Martin Rennie, Park Gun-ha, Kim Byung-soo, and Chung Jung-yong have taken the helm, but have repeatedly failed to advance to the K-League 2. Under Park Chung-kyun’s leadership this season, the team fell to 11th place in the K-League 2, and eventually decided to leave Park for the first time in a year.
The desperate Seoul E-Land team started preparing for the new season early, and selected Kim Do-kyun as a candidate for the new head coach in search of a coach who has experience in promotion to the K League 1. Kim previously led Suwon FC to promotion in 2020. This is the first time in the history of Seoul E-Land that a coach who has experience in promotion has been assigned the baton. If the remaining one-year contract between Kim Do-kyun and Suwon FC is well established, he is expected to take the helm of Seoul E-Land. 스포츠토토
Kim Do-kyun, who is likely to be the new coach of Seoul E-Land, has been at the helm of Suwon FC since 2020 after retiring as a player, after serving as coach of Seonam University, Ulsan Hyundai Middle School (U-15 team), and Ulsan Hyundai. In his first year in office, he led the team to second place in the K League 2 and promoted it to the K League 1 stage, and led it to stay in the K League 1 for three consecutive seasons from 2021.
In particular, he ranked fifth in the K League 1 in his first year of promotion and ranked seventh in the last season, succeeding in a soft landing on the K League 1 stage after promotion. Even if he lost a lot of points, he was well received by Suwon FC and K League fans for his aggressive soccer. This season, his ranking fell to 11th place in the K League 1, and he was on the verge of being demoted, but he led a 5-2 come-from-behind victory in the second round of the promotion playoff against Busan I’Park after extra time.
Kim Do-kyun, who shed tears on the ground after leading Suwon FC to stay in the team, said, “I thought I had to endure well for three years (after my appointment). The third season has become the most difficult. In fact, I thought all season long, “Suwon FC can’t continue like this.” Players are getting older and their mobility is declining. I think there should be a lot of changes either way.”
“We need to revisit the bad points and make up for those bad points. In fact, Suwon FC is not in a situation where it will spend a lot of money to recruit players. As Choi Soon-ho thinks, developing young players is a must in the long run. Anyway, we have to continue to survive in the first division at the same time (with growth). I think it takes a lot of thought and effort to create a team that can compete and remain in the first division,” he said in an interview suggesting a breakup with Suwon FC. After actually leading Suwon FC to the first division, Kim started anew as a leader under the leadership of K-League 2 Seoul E-Land.