‘Prince Meatwillan’ Cho Kyu-sung joins Serie A’s Genoa for 7 billion…”Everything is possible in football”
Can South Korean striker Cho Kyu-sung (Meatwillan) follow in the footsteps of his teammate who dominated the Danish scene and made it to the Italian Serie A?
“What if there is a place for a Korean soccer player in the future of the ‘Griffin’ (Genoa’s nickname)?” the Italian media outlet Calcioline reported on March 15 (KST).
“As we know, everything is possible in football, and the arrival of a player in Genoa is probably almost unthinkable,” said the media outlet, which mainly covers Fiorentina, Bologna, and Genoa, teams from the city located between Milan, Turin, and central Rome in northern Italy.
“We are talking about striker Cho Kyu-sung, who recently made headlines by scoring a goal to defeat Roberto Mancini’s Saudi Arabia.” Cho scored a header in the 32nd minute to give South Korea a 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia in an international friendly at St. James’ Park in Newcastle, England, on March 13.
Jürgen Klinsmann’s first win in charge of the South Korean national soccer team came after six games, thanks to a goal from Cho Kyu-sung.
Cho’s recent impressive performances for club side Mitwilan and the national team have sparked interest from Italian Serie A club Genoa. The 130-year-old club won promotion last season after finishing second in the Italian Serie B (second division). They will play in the top flight starting in the 2023/24 season.
After finishing 19th in the league in the 2021/22 season and returning to Serie A a year after being relegated to the second division, Genoa, whose top priority is to stay up, have expressed interest in Cho Kyu-sung, who has been performing well since their recent arrival in Europe.
“A central striker who can also play as a left or right winger, he would be interested in a ‘major’ competition and Genoa can offer him this opportunity,” the outlet said of Cho, explaining that the prospect of playing in one of Europe’s top professional leagues could be tempting.
“Cho Kyu-sung has a long-term contract with Mittwillan that expires in June 2028, but at least for now, he’s probably worth no more than €5 million (about $7.1 billion). Is it a possible deal, maybe,” he said, adding that it wouldn’t be out of the question for the right transfer fee.
There are three main reasons why Genoa would be interested in Cho Kyu-sung. The first is that he has proven himself to be a goal scorer since making his debut in the Danish top flight.
He scored the first goal of the 2023/24 Danish Superliga away to Viborg in the eighth round at Viborg Stadium in Viborg, Denmark, in the seventh minute of the game with the score tied at 0-0. On the day, Mittwillan failed to protect Cho Kyu-sung’s opener and drew 2-2 in a hard-fought match, but it reaffirmed the Korean striker’s quality.
Cho, who became the first South Korean player to score two goals in a single World Cup match when he scored a header against Ghana at last year’s World Cup in Qatar, headed in Denmark’s first goal and showed off his advanced post play as he weaved his way through the large Danish players.
This day was no different, as the Brazilian striker lunged in from the right side of the penalty area to head home a cross from the left flank by Paulinho, the ball bouncing once in the goal area before finding the back of the net.
Jo Kyu-sung, who joined Metwylan from Jeonbuk in mid-July, took his tally to four goals in seven games and moved into a tie for fourth place on the Super League scoring list. It’s safe to say he’s actually third, as one of the players with one more goal than Cho has moved to another league. If you include his goal in the UEFA Europa Conference qualifiers, he has five goals in 12 official matches.
Earlier, he made his European debut with a header against Hvidore on July 22, the opening day of Mittwilan’s season, to kick-start his campaign. He was named to the first round’s Best 11 by the Superliga.
On July 31, he scored a cool right-footed diagonal shot from inside the penalty area against Silkeborg, proving that he is also an excellent striker with his feet in addition to his headers. Mittwilan also rode the back of Cho Kyu-sung’s goal to a second straight win.
Cho Kyu-sung played the last 10 minutes of the third round match against Lingbee on March 7, worried about the after-effects of playing all 120 minutes of extra time in the previous UEFA Europa Conference match, but scored his third goal in as many games. However, it was not enough as the team lost 1-4.
Mittwillan’s subsequent struggles with a hamstring (back thigh muscle) injury that forced him to miss six rounds of four games have left him without a goal, and the team has slipped to mid-table, hovering around sixth place out of 12 teams. They were also eliminated in the final playoffs of the UEFA Europa Conference qualifiers, losing to Legia Warsaw in Poland.
However, in the eighth round, the team returned to form with a taste for goals.
It’s even more encouraging that he continued his upward trend in A-match scoring. A rejuvenated Cho Kyu-sung showed his return to form with a spectacular header in his first game back with the team. He started back-to-back games against Wales and Saudi Arabia in the A-Match, and in the latter match, he scored the game-winner in the 32nd minute of the first half when he headed home a ball that had been misplayed by his opponent to secure a 1-0 victory. In addition to scoring a goal, Cho Kyu-sung also teased the opposing defense, showing that he has improved his skills in Europe.
He used that to his advantage against Viborg.
In addition to his goal proliferation, it’s worth noting that his goal-decision ratio is very high for his playing time. Cho has appeared in seven games in the Danish Superliga this season, starting six of them, with the exception of the sixth round match against Nordsjælland, which he missed due to injury. However, he has never played the full 90 minutes.
In the opening match against Hvidovre, he played 72 minutes until the 27th minute of the second leg before being substituted off in the 28th minute against Silkeborg. In the third round, he was substituted in the 35th minute, and in the fourth round against Vejle, he played only the last eight minutes and left the field relatively early.
Cho Kyu-sung, who started against Brønbjerg in Round 5 but was subbed off in the 19th minute of the first half with a hamstring injury, played his most minutes against AGF on the last three days before the A-Match break, playing 40 minutes in the second half.
And for the first time in four regular-season games, he was sweating until the final whistle in Viborg, where he scored again.
He hasn’t had a lot of playing time, but his goals to minutes ratio shows that he has the explosiveness of a top-tier striker. With Mitwylan’s Europa League qualification, Souperi only played 402 minutes in the seven games he played between rounds 1-8. That means he’s scoring a goal every 100 minutes, or about one point per game. Add to that an assist, and that’s almost an offensive point per 80 minutes.
The transfer rumors have also excited fans as the Mittwilan striker has been performing well in the Danish league and has made the jump to Serie A before Cho. Danish winger Gustav Isaksen, born in 2001, left Mittwilan on August 8, signing a five-year contract with Italian powerhouse SS Lazio.
Isaksen was Denmark’s top scorer last season with 18 goals in the league alone. Lazio, who finished second in Serie A the previous season, paid €12 million ($18 billion) for Isaksen’s services, so like Isaksen, Cho Kyu-sung, who currently has four goals in the league, was expected to have a better chance of making it to the big leagues if the Danish Superliga’s top striker emerged.
With interest already coming from the big leagues so soon after his debut in Europe, the question of when an offer would come from a top club was raised. At the time of his move to Midtjylland, there was a lot of “why go there?” as the Danish league is a mid-tier league that is ranked 17th in the UEFA league rankings, and Midtjylland is a mid-tier club in Denmark. They thought that if Cho Kyu-sung failed in Denmark, he would just come back with his pride.
This also led to criticism of Jeonbuk’s director, Korean soccer legend Park Ji-sung, who had been on the phone all summer with the player, offering him the right terms in terms of transfer fee, salary, and playing time. However, in his final game with Jeonbuk, Cho hit back, saying, “I don’t know why Park is being criticized. It was my choice.” He went on to say that he was recognized as one of the top strikers in Mittwillan and scored a goal to prove it.
The Danish league is not as lowly as some might suggest. In fact, it’s ranked higher than the Greek league, which is ranked 19th. Furthermore, Denmark reached the quarterfinals of the European Football Championship two years ago, so the country’s popularity is high, drawing large crowds and high levels of skill, as evidenced by this match against Cho Kyu-sung. The Danish players are physically fit, so if Cho succeeds in Denmark, he has the option of moving to Germany or other Western European leagues. 메이저놀이터
When Kim joined Fenerbahçe, the Turkkiye League wasn’t ranked very high, hovering around the top 15.
In addition to Isaksen’s move to Lazio, Mitwylan striker Sori Kaba also made a surprise move to Spanish La Liga promotion side Las Palmas this summer. Danish striker Rasmus Højlund, who now plays for Manchester United, also moved from Denmark to Italy via Atalanta.
In particular, it is known that the agent who arranged the transfer of Cho Kyu-sung is from Italy, so Cho Kyu-sung’s move to Genoa has become a convincing transfer theory in its own right. It will be interesting for Korean soccer fans to quickly predict the new destination of the Danish international.
As for Serie A, the league has recently become a stopover for clubs looking to move to England or Spain. As it has become a route to the Premier League for high-value players, strikers like Cho Kyu-sung, who thrive in Europe’s mid-tier leagues, are gaining prominence.
