It has been a strange K-League season. The constant stopping and starting has robbed the competition of any momentum. A series of World Cup qualifiers in May and June necessitated a break of a month and by the time play started again in July, the Olympic torch was lit in Beijing and tools were downed once more. Beijing 2008 will receive barely a footnote in the annals of South Korean football history. The draw, defeat and win may have been a better record than any other Asian nation managed in China, including the hosts, but it still meant that the team returned home at the end of the first round. Coach Park Sung-hwa is escaping to study in England. The one-time Busan boss is a man with many friends in the upper echelons of the Seoul media but couldn’t escape a good deal of criticism. What made it worse, for football fans at least, was the fact that the baseball team returned across the Yellow Sea with gold and met with a heroes welcome. The 2002 World Cup gave the world the understandable, but misleading, impression that South Korea was a football mad country. It is not. Baseball is more popular. Even before the gold, television ratings are usually around 60% higher for the average baseball match and attendances tend to be higher. Those Olympic events, coupled with the plodding performances of the senior national team, have led certain sections of the media to say that football is in crisis. Again, it is not but the K-League has some work to do to work its way to somewhere near the hearts and minds of the locals. Not in Suwon though – the city is still a strong football bedrock in the Land of the Morning Calm. The Bluewings regularly play in front of 30,000 or more and 2008 has been a season to remember for those followers. They watched their team put together a record-breaking 11 match winning streak that sent them nine points clear at the top. If it wasn’t for the play-off system and the fact that there aren’t really bookies in Korea in the English sense, the bookies would have considered paying out. To say it has all gone wrong is an overstatement. With three-quarters of the regular season over, Suwon are level on points at the top with Seongnam Ilwha Chunma but the aura of invincibility disappeared in July along with the monsoon weather. A 1-0 defeat at the hands of the struggling Daejeon Citizen was a surprise rather than a shock - Daejeon have a good record against the three-time champions - but what followed was a defeat at home by the same scoreline to rivals Seongnam. Suddenly the goals from star strikers Edu, Shin Young-rok and Seo Dong-hyun dried up. Only a last-minute strike against bottom club Busan avoided a shock defeat and while Suwon are still guaranteed a play-off spot, form must improve if a fourth title is on the cards. The news that star summer signing Lee Chun-soo is injured doesn't help. In five games, Suwon have collected just four points. Every team has a blip and as it comes after a run of 33 from 33, it is not a disaster but in the meantime, Seongnam have been on fire. The seven-time champions have won six out of their last seven. Despite the broken rib of star striker Mota, Seongnam have barely broken their stride. Youngster Han Dong-won has chipped in with three goals in the last two games. Seongnam are looking fresh and confident while Suwon are spluttering. Worse for Suwon is the fact that bitter rivals FC Seoul are in good form and not that far behind in third. If that doesn’t get the Bluewings fired up for this weekend’s clash on the southern island of Jeju, nothing will. Copyright: John Duerden & Soccerphile Bet with Bet 365 World Soccer News Soccer betting tips Soccer Books & DVDs Tags Soccer News soccer football J-League K-League Betting

“This is like deja vu all over again”, said baseball legend Yogi Berra once upon a time. A quick glance at the top of the current K-league table certainly brings a host of memories flooding back for football fans around the nation. Suwon Samsung Bluewings are in first place after winning four and drawing one of the five games so far. That single blemish came when Suwon faced old rivals Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma earlier in the season. Seongnam are now in second. The two Gyeonggi Province teams spent all of 2007 fighting at the top and are once again out on their own. Last weekend certainly brought back some bad memories for FC Seoul. Watched by more than 44,000 fans in the capital, the club once again saw an early-season good start ended by Suwon. Last April, the 1-0 defeat inflicted by the Bluewings stopped the Seoul season dead in its tracks. It remains to be seen how the 2-0 defeat on Sunday affects Senol Gunes and his players. Those players were unlucky as they controlled much of the match against Suwon. Especially in the first half, a number of chances came Seoul’s way and they all went begging. Dejan Damjanovic, Jung Jo-gook, Park Chu-young and Lee Chung-yong all could have done better. While Seoul’s superiority was real, it was also fragile. As poor as Suwon looked in the first half, the team, roared on by thousands of travelling fans, still carried an air of sleepy menace and a constant threat that Seoul would be made to pay for its profligacy. That is exactly what happened six minutes into the second half. Young striker Shin Young-rok let fly from 25 meters more in hope than expectation and somehow Seoul goalkeeper Kim Ho-jun let the ball soar over him to send the massed ranks of Suwon supporters behind the net into raptures. Those fantastic fans were celebrating once again 11 minutes later as young Shin fired a low shot into the net from the edge of the area and it was as good as game over. “This is a game that we really should have won, but the result was a defeat. We just didn’t take our chances” said Seoul coach Senol Gunes after the match. “It sounds like an excuse but I can’t blame my players as it was a good performance.” His opposite number Cha Bum-keun couldn’t stop smiling. “The first half was really tough for us but we recovered well. Our defence held firm so we there were opportunities for us in the second half.” Not too far to the west, Incheon United was suffering the same fate as Seoul – a 2-0 home loss ending an unbeaten start to the season. Seongnam’s Brazilian duo of Mota and Dudu did the damage for the seven-time champions who are now on the coat-tails of the Bluewings. Now Suwon and Seongnam have positioned themselves at the front of the pack, it remains to be seen if they break away in much the same fashion as 2007. It certainly is possible as the two teams look to be a level above their competitors. Before the season started, it was expected that those competitors would include Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors but the 2006 Asian champions have had a shocking start. The signing of international striker Cho Jae-jin was supposed to push the Jeonju team into the upper echelons of the table but the team is in last with four defeats in five matches. The latest was a 3-0 home setback at the hands of a stylish Daegu FC. Champions Pohang Steelers are also struggling with just one win so far this season. Perhaps it is at the bottom of the table where we will see some surprises in 2008 because at the top, it is the same old story. Copyright: John Duerden & Soccerphile.com Bet with Bet 365 World Soccer News Soccer betting tips Soccer Books & DVDs Tags Soccer News soccer football J-League K-League Betting