South Korea – Czechia: the night Korea learned to win without Son Heung-min

At the moment that will define South Korea’s opening night, their captain was a spectator. Son Heung-min came off in the 69th minute, jogging to the touchline at Estadio Akron with the score level and the game still there to be lost, and from the bench he watched the man sent on in his place win it. Oh Hyeon-gyu’s finish eleven minutes later sealed a 2-1 comeback over Czechia that Korea had to drag out of a sweltering Guadalajara afternoon — and it said more about this team than any pass Son played all night.

This was the closing act of the World Cup’s opening day, played out under a heavy Guadalajara sun while the tournament was still finding its feet. Korea arrived as Group A’s nominal favourites — Asia’s most decorated World Cup nation, ranked inside the world’s top thirty, captained by a Premier League great now seeing out his prime in Los Angeles. For an hour, almost none of that travelled onto the pitch with them.

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Czechia were the side with the clearer idea. Back at a World Cup after twenty years away, Miroslav Koubek’s team had not come to charm anyone. They hunted second balls, loaded the box, and treated every long throw as a set play worth rehearsing. It paid in the 59th minute: Vladimir Coufal hurled one in from the right, the Korean defence backed off, and captain Ladislav Krejčí climbed highest to head it down and in. It was the precise goal, from the precise delivery, that Czechia had spent the build-up promising to score.

Koubek then doubled down. With his side in front, he sent on the two-metre Tomáš Chory for Patrik Schick just after the hour, a swap that traded finesse for sheer size and all but announced that Czechia meant to defend the lead with their elbows and their height. In the moment it looked shrewd. Within twenty minutes it looked like the decision that lost them the match.

A more brittle Korea folds there. This one answered inside eight minutes. Hwang In-beom carried the equalizer out of a flowing, one-touch move — the kind of football Czechia’s physical plan was built to smother — and the favourites had their grip back. Then came the let-off every comeback seems to need: Tomáš Souček rose to nod Czechia ahead again, the net rippled, and the offside flag wiped it out. Korea exhaled, and went again.

The winner was a substitute’s goal in every sense. With Son withdrawn and Oh Hyeon-gyu thrown on, Korea kept pressing a tiring Czech back line, and on 80 minutes the move ran through Hwang and Paik Seung-ho before Oh slipped across his marker and flicked the cross past Matej Kovar. A bench that decides a match is the signature of a serious tournament team. For the better part of a decade Korea has been read as Son Heung-min and ten passengers — a one-man story with a clock attached, because the man is thirty-three and this may be his last World Cup. On the very night he made way, his replacement won the game. They should sit with that.

And yet the manner of Krejčí’s goal is the thread Korea cannot afford to keep pulling. They were beaten in the air, off a throw-in, by an opponent that had advertised that exact intention for weeks — and they nearly shipped a second the same way before the linesman rescued them. Group A does not soften from here. Co-hosts Mexico, 2-0 winners over South Africa earlier in the day, will have watched that header and filed it; South Africa will have too. The set-piece, second-ball, target-man blueprint Czechia used is the easiest plan in football to photocopy, and everyone left on Korea’s schedule now has the tape.

So which Korea checked in at Guadalajara — the one with the nerve to win without its talisman, or the one with a soft spot under a high ball that sharper sides will keep testing? The honest answer is both, and that is exactly what makes three points on opening weekend so interesting. Son Heung-min watched the end of this one from the sideline, and his team did not need him. The harder question is whether they can fix what they showed while he was still on the pitch.

Tags: South Korea, wc26, 2026 FIFA World Cup, Group A, Czechia

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