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| dalpaengi | Feb 18 2009, 02:59 PM |
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Part 2 By mid-1997, the Yukong corporation changed their name to SK Group and so the football club became known as Bucheon SK, though it was still playing in Seoul and awaiting the construction of the Bucheon Leports stadium in the city of Bucheon. At some point in 1999, the K-League decided that all clubs had to be playing in home venues that had floodlights in order to play night football. This was fine for all clubs except Ilhwa Chunma, who were playing in a stadium down in Cheonan that didn't have floodlights. As the Cheonan city government were in the middle of building a brand new sports complex across the city they didn't fancy forking out for temporary lighting at the older venue, and Ilhwa Chunma didn't want to pay up either. The solution - move cities. They left Cheonan at the end of 1999 and from 2000 became Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma. Bucheon SK finally got to play in the city of Bucheon from the 2001 season as the Leports stadium was finally finished. Of course, before all this came about Korea had been awarded joint-hosting of the 2002 FIFA World Cup and they had to come up with ten new stadiums as their part of the plan. A number of city governments bid to have stadiums built in their cities, and it was generally agreed that they would be built in places that either had teams currently based there or that were willing to create teams along a similar model to Daejeon Citizen, the first non-corporate team in the league created in 1997. Daejeon, Busan, Suwon, Ulsan and Jeonju (city of Chonbuk Hyundai Motors) all had existing K-League member teams playing in their cities so they were picked for venues, and Daegu, Incheon, Seoul, Jeju and Gwangju all committed to getting their own teams off the ground so World Cup venues were built there. Daegu created their own team and joined the K-League in 2003 and the Gwangju WC stadium entered use at the same time as the military side Sangmu joined up and played there. Incheon United joined the league in 2004 and that meant that eight of the ten World Cup venues were in use - the two unused venues were the Seoul World Cup stadium and Seogwipo World Cup stadium on the island of Jeju, interestingly enough the two World Cup stadiums at the furthest distance apart in the country. Seoul City Hall had planned to create a football club to play in the capital, but the KFA were looking to pass off $15m of their construction fees for the Seoul WC venue onto any teams that wanted to play in the capital. Perhaps understandably the city government didn't fancy paying that on top of the near-$20m fees required to actually join the league so they decided against creating a club. During 2003 the K-League then said they'd consider letting two teams play in the capital if they split the $15m two ways but even then no other corporation seemed willing to step in and back a brand new club. That's when the K-League invited current member clubs to apply to move to the capital with LG and Daewoo (by this time the team was operated by a subsiduary and called Busan I'cons) bidding to relocate. As it was, LG's bid was accepted in late 2003 and so they moved their team the short distance from Anyang and back to the capital to become FC Seoul. This pissed off football fans in the country no end and all sorts of protests were aimed at the league, LG and the new club. Anyang fans tried to get a team off the ground to join the second division, and football fans in Seoul worked at getting their own club together but ran into massive hurdles. Anyway, back to Bucheon SK, who had become firmly rooted to the bottom of the K-League around 2003 and 2004. The SK Group were cutting funding at a massive rate in order to save their organisation as a whole, and cutting spending on such frivilous things as sports teams seemed to be the place to do that. As investment dropped, performances and crowds dropped and then SK bemoaned the fact that no-one was turning up whilst the fans suggested that was because they weren't investing. A bit of a vicious circle, but SK said they remained committed to working things out and improving the side. Ironically enough they enjoyed a much better 2005 season, missing out on the championship playoffs in the final minutes of the season, but behind the scenes they were working on a plan to revitalise the team. That plan involved relocating the team 450km south to the island of Jeju, taking up residence at the Seogwipo World Cup stadium and becoming Jeju United. All this was done secretly and the first hint that anything was going to happen came when the team owner stood at the Seogwipo stadium about a month before the 2006 season and said "ta-da!". So that's that - SK continue to operate their team on the island of Jeju but, three seasons on, it hasn't really provided the massive shot in the arm the team needed. They finished fourth overall in their final season in Bucheon, whereas they came 13th in 2006, 11th in 2007 and 10th in 2008. Average attendances are effectively the same, if one discounts the ridiculously high opening-day attendances that every single club gets, and have dipped into three figures on several occasions. Where next? |
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| A brief history of SK Football Club · History | |
8:29 PM Dec 7
