Welcome, everybody to soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell. Always good to start off the show by hitting my microphone. I hope that hasn't dissuaded you from listening because today we're talking about South Korean football. We are continuing our series on teams that have qualified for the 2026 World Cup by looking at domestic soccer in that country. And today, Graham Ruffin, we're talking the People's Republic of Korea. I believe they do not like to be called South Korea, but we'll give them that level of billing first. Yeah, we're going to talk about the K-League. And I'm genuinely looking forward to this episode because the K-League is a league that I, it's genuinely a league I've thought previously I should try and get into more.

See, the J League, I have a little, I have like a surface level knowledge of the J League and who's near the top of the table at any given time. The K League, I don't normally have that knowledge. But it seems like a cool league. Like I've done a couple of newsletter stories on it in the past, and yeah, it just seems cool. So if Sky want to pick up the UK, right,

or if Mark Goldbridge can up the UK right sort of

mark Goldbridge can can find the money for some another league's rights yeah i'm down for

yeah if you're listening to this uh not the week of august 20th 2025 uh the news is that uh in

england if you want to watch the Bundesliga you you're now going to YouTube, correct, Graham?

In the UK, yeah, the world is wild. It is wild, excuse me. Yeah, Mark Goldbridge, the face of the Binsliga in the UK. I imagine the changing in broadcast and streaming rights is a later 101 episode. For now, let's focus on the K League. The longest, oldest professional

football league in Asian football established in 1983, but has gone through some changes, Graham,

to put it mildly. Yeah, so just first of all, a quick outline of why we're doing this episode,

because there will be listeners who know why we're doing these deep dives into leagues.

But if maybe some people aren't familiar, we are basically doing a series of looking at the domestic game of teams that have qualified for the 2026 World Cup.

So we've done Iran and Japan and Uzbekistan and a few others.

And seen as South Korea qualified in June, we figured that this was up next and they

qualified very comfortably from a group that included Jordan and Oman and Iraq, Palestine and Kuwait,

finished top of their group unbeaten, and it's a team that is generally competitive at World Cups,

they tend to qualify. And the K League is regarded as one of the stronger leagues in Asia or if we're being pedantic Taylor it's

K-League 1 and then there's also K-League 2 as well K-League 1 is the top domestic

division in South Korean football and that's like the brand name K-League which I always

like that as a name I like the J-League as a name as as as well.

It has previously been called the Korean Super League and the Korean Professional Football League.

The K-League name dates back to 1998, excuse me, when South Korea was gearing up for co-hosting

the 2002 World Cup with Japan at the time. And yeah, the K-League or

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