South Korea produce stirring revival to get off to winning start at FIFA World Cup

The win was probably deserved in the end, given that Korea had the dominant share of possession with 62%.Yet, for a while, it looked as though the lack of a clinical edge would be costly.

An excellent double save proved crucial in denying both Lee Kang-In and Lee Jae-Sung four minutes after the restart, before Kovář made himself big to deny Son in a one-on-one situation — albeit from an acute angle — seven minutes later.

And it soon looked like it would be one of those days, when, against the run of play, Czechia broke the deadlock three minutes before the hour mark.

South Korea had hitherto looked shaky only under high balls hung up inside their area. So it should come as no surprise that a long throw hurled in by Vladimír Coufal paved the way for his captain, Ladislav Krejčí, to put a thumping header into the back of the net.

With South Korea’s front three just lacking a killer edge, midfield metronome Hwang — more often creating the chances rather than putting them away — stepped up.

Just ten minutes after his team fell behind, Hwang ran onto a probing pass from Lee Kang-In. Not known for his speed, he seemed to take an eternity to get to the ball but ultimately reached it first. And with a clever feint, he put Kovář on his backside and sent a recovering Robin Hranáč flying out of the picture — leaving himself the simple task of delicately lifting the ball into the unguarded net.

South Korea’s unconvincing defending of set-pieces almost hurt them again in the 77th minute — and it will be something they have to work on. On this occasion, Tomáš Souček’s header was correctly ruled out for offside.