Former coach of the French team, Aime Jacquet said at a seminar at the Paju Training Center last February, "The reason France won in the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Games was the result of the 25 years that France spent raising children."

France chose soccer restoration as a national industry in the mid 70s along with the establishment of the National Football Research Center and with it, was able to stand at the top ranks. Currently, France has about 1 million players with ages between 6 and 17. England's David Beckham and Michael Owen, and Brazil's "emperor of soccer" Ronaldo, all became superstars through systematic training after being acknowledged as talented in youth soccer.

Nextdoor neighbor Japan began ‘digging’ for promising young players in the early 80s and did not spare investment in sending them to study abroad in soccer developed countries and inviting famous teachers.

After coach Hiddink took charge of the Korean team, he pointed out, "The reason Korean players fall behind players of soccer developed countries is because there is no systematic cultivating system." Learning the basics, then testing one's talent in a youth team of a professional soccer club, then playing as a professional is a three level process that Koreans cannot dream of. The reality of Korea’s soccer is that players are engrossed in raising the team's performance in order to achieve the final goal, which is "college admissions."

Early last year, the Korean Football Association started the 'Korea Soccer Vision 2010' project with the goal of "entering the top ten of FIFA rankings by 2010." They included sending young players abroad and the systemization of programs as their core assignment. Immediately, W18 billion out of the total budget of W179.38 billion was assigned to aid youth clubs under the age of 8. Also, they decided to send 10 promising young players to England and made each professional club run a children's club under the age of 12. It is a late start for the '10 year soccer plan.'

However, the association must focus on the training of professional coaches as well as youth. That is because it is the leader that discovers new talents and polishes them. Currently, instructors are assigned by age to a group of 13 to 16-year-olds in the youth representative teams, but good instructors are needed outside the representative teams as well. The Netherlands, Hiddink’s mother country, introduced ‘Dutch Vision,’ a coach training program in 1974 and raised 6,000 coaches to dispatch all around the world. They are continuously re-educated in order to have coherence in their strategies and organizing ability to prevent careless, random training of players. That is certainly something that we should learn a lesson from.