Incheon United head coach Cho Sung-hwan explains why he started all five of his foreign players.
Incheon United defeated Caja Ilbo 4-0 in the second leg of their 2023-2024 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League (ACL) Group G match at the Incheon Football Stadium on Wednesday. Incheon, which qualified for the ACL for the first time in club history, is cruising through the group stage. They followed up a 4-2 win over Yokohama Marinos in the first leg with two straight wins.
Incheon jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first half. Mugosa scored a multi-goal performance, including a penalty kick, and Hernandez added another. In the second half, Mpoku scored the game-winning goal with a stunning free kick.
Speaking at the post-match press conference, Cho said, “We got the three points we wanted, some rotation ahead of the weekend against Ulsan (Hyundai), and the return of players who haven’t played much. And before all that, we won in front of our home fans. As a head coach, I feel good about it,” he said after the game.레고토토
Incheon started all five of its foreign players on the day. Mugosha and Jerso led the attack, with Mpoku and Hernandez supporting them in the attacking midfield. Delbridge was solid at the back. It was an unusual lineup in the Korean Football League, which has a foreign player rule.
Cho said, “I think it’s the first time I’ve started five foreign players in my coaching career. It paid off. We thought that if we scored early, we could score a lot of goals, so we started all the foreign strikers from the beginning.”
When asked if he had any pre-match or post-halftime messages for the multi-goal scorer, Mugosa replied, “It was a game that could have gone either way depending on when the first goal came. I asked them to be focused in their scoring chances. The players executed well and scored,” he said, adding, “We made a quick substitution to keep them fresh for the Ulsan match. We didn’t talk about it, but they must have understood it for the Ulsan match.”