The Hazards of At-Will Promotion

Korean’s second-tier league, the N-League, was founded less than 10 years ago, and the possibility of promotion to the K-League for the winner of a playoff was introduced only last year, creating an urgency that the professional set-up in Korea hadn’t previously had. Well, sort of. You see, it costs several million dollars to make the jump to the top league, even if you do win the playoff, and if teams don’t feel like funding the K-League slush fund, they have the option of refusing promotion and staying down. You know where this is going, don’t you?

This year, the teams in the playoff were Suwon City and Ulsan Mipo, the first of which said from the start that they did not want to be promoted, thanks, while their opponents were all about taking their chances at the top level. But instead of just handing the promotion to Ulsan, the league went ahead with the two-legged playoff, despite the fact that it would be wildly inconvenient to the them to see Suwon City win.

So, the Powers That Be decided to make sure they couldn’t: With Suwon up 1-0 in the 35th minute of the first match, the referee awarded Ulsan a penalty, sending off the player who committed the foul. Then, in the next four minutes, he found reason to show straight reds to three more Suwon players, leaving them with seven men going into the break. Not being morons, they came out in the second half and immediately picked up an intentional red, thus forcing a forfeit and ending the match as a 3-0 win for Ulsan. (Can you imagine the frenzy if this had happened in Italy?)

Surely just protecting the public from itself, the league refused to televise the second leg, calling it “too controversial.” Not surprisingly, the match ended in another Ulsan win, and they were awarded promotion. But not so fast — it turns out they were a bit hasty in their enthusiasm, and it was announced last week that they’re refusing to go up. Oh well. It’s nice to know that the fix is an option, if they need it again next year.

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Category: Asia, World Football