Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer.

Our guest today is Steve Hahn, a journalist who covers South Korean football and East Asian football in general. He's the Korean content lead for FIFA.com, but his work appears lots of places and his YouTube channel, Fairpoint Football, is definitely worth checking out. He sat down with Yergen Clemsman for like 90 minutes a few months ago, and it's an excellent interview. There's lots more to check out there as well. Anyway, Steve, welcome to scuffed. Thanks for your time.

Adam, thank you, man. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, just looking forward to this.

I've been excited ever since you got touch with me last week.

That's great. That's awesome. So South Korea qualified for the World Cup in a trot,

finishing off with a 4-0 home win over Kuwait.

A couple questions about that.

So how difficult is the travel for players for the Korean national team?

We talk about our part of the world presenting problems with travel, but you really got to double

those distances when it comes to Asia.

So what effect does that have?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's the worst, man, for players in East Asia.

Because I think it's worse than players from any other region, maybe except the Australians and the players from the OFC region like New Zealand.

Yeah.

Because I think when it comes to the U.S., I mean, you guys have it pretty bad, too. I don't get me wrong. But I think the biggest challenge for the players in the U.S. are actually the players in MLS. The MLS players who have to travel across such a big country on a weekly basis because, I mean, to me, the U.S. is more like a continent than a country, at least in terms of, you know, its sheer size, to be honest.

Yeah.

And I mean, to me, the U.S. is more like a continent than a country,

at least in terms of, you know, its sheer size, to be honest. And I mean, I asked Steve Shorundalo what Sonny's biggest challenge in MLS would be something that he might have never experienced in Europe. And it didn't even take him a second. He said, it's going to be traveling. So, you know, I've also spoken to Huang Inbum, one of, one of Korea's midfielder who played for the Vancouver Y-Caps in the past. And, you know, in his first season in MLS in 2000, or was it, no, it was 2019, he was completely destroyed by the amount of traveling he had to do. Just within MLS, and on top of all that, he had to travel to Korea for the national team games.

You know, because in Korea, especially for players who were brought up domestically,

you can get to any city in Korea from anywhere in a couple hours at most.

You know what I mean?

So it's a completely different challenge when you're in North America.

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