Melbourne Victory continue the Club’s first-ever AFC Champions League Two campaign this week.
The Boys in Blue are on home soil to host South Korean opposition FC Seoul on Wednesday, October 14, kick-off 6:45pm AEDT.
Before the match gets underway at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, learn more about the club that Giovanni Savarese’s team will take on.
The past
Although formed in 1983, the same year as the South Korean Professional Football League (K League 1), it was not until the following year that FC Seoul, then Lucky-Goldstar Hwangso Football Club, were inserted as the country’s fifth professional football club.
They were initially based in Chungcheong Province, some 100km south of Seoul, despite preferring to be in the capital, but claimed the league title in only their second season, when 100-cap Thailand international and golden boot winner Piyapong Pue-on helped them top the 1985 table by a two-point margin.
The Dark Red Warriors have won five further championships since (1990, 2000, 2010, 2012, 2016), the third most in the competition’s history, but their underlying story is one of transit.
Their long-desired relocation to Seoul immediately delivered a second K League 1 crown, but the club, by this point named LG Cheetahs, would find themselves roadbound again for eight years from 1996, a little way south of their previous home, in Anyang.
Following the 2002 FIFA Men’s World Cup, the purpose-built Seoul World Cup Stadium, where the reverse Group E match will be staged in December, became available for a new tenant, and FC Seoul took the opportunity to move in. It has not all been smooth sailing since, however, and two years after their latest title in 2016, the club was forced to play its first-ever relegation play-off, defeating Busan IPark to preserve their top-flight status.
The present
Led by Kim Gi-dong, appointed in late 2023, FC Seoul are on the verge of their first K League 1 title in a decade, requiring four points from their final seven league matches after a fine run of seven wins from nine outings has propelled them clear at the summit.
And its healthy advantage ahead of the run-in was seemingly not dented by a narrow away loss to second-place Ulsan in early September, nor was confidence apparently dented by an AFC Champions League Two Match Day 1 home loss to Preliminary Match qualifiers Persib Bandung.
Seoul’s latest success, on Saturday over Jeju SK, was the campaign’s 20th league maximum, with the winning moment coming from former Sydney FC loanee Patryk Klimala’s 13th goal of the season.
The future
Next up is a meeting with 10th-place Gimcheon Sangmu, who, owing to a K League restructure, including the division expanding to 14 teams from 2027, are being relegated irrespective of their final ranking.
Three points from this match, combined with favourable results elsewhere, would see FC Seoul return to the champions club and qualify for next season’s AFC Champions League Elite.
It is also likely that their weight of focus would shift from domestic matters to their existing participation in continental competition, having fielded a particuarly youthful side on Match Day 1.
