Korea to face Singapore in first World Cup qualifier

Korea will meet Singapore in their first game of the World Cup Asian qualifiers on Thursday, beginning the long road to 2026 in a second round group stage match on home turf in Seoul, heading to the pitch on the tail of three straight wins.

Captain Son Heung-min, center, trains with the Korean national team ahead of their Thursday match against Singapore on Monday at Seoul World Cup Stadium in Seoul. [NEWS1]

Korea will meet Singapore in their first game of the World Cup Asian qualifiers on Thursday, kicking off the long road to 2026 in a second round group stage match on home turf in western Seoul.

The Korean national team heads to the pitch on the tail of three straight wins, crushing Tunisia 4-0 and Vietnam 6-0 during the October friendlies and besting Saudi Arabia 1-0 in September.

No. 24 Korea, who have played in the last 10 World Cups, are largely favored to top the second round Group C. They’ll meet No. 79 China in Shenzhen, China next week after their opener against the No. 155 Lions from Singapore and face No. 112 Thailand next year.

But head coach Jurgen Klinsmann said the national team would not be overlooking any opponent on what will be a long road to qualification.

"All the teams that fight for a spot in the World Cup will fight even harder now," Klinsmann said during a press conference earlier this week in Seoul. "You have to have a very professional mindset. We will be very serious in every World Cup qualifying game.”

Klinsmann, who has helmed the Taeguk Warriors since February, has called up an all-star roster for Thursday’s road to 2026 opener after the national team’s show of dominance last month.

It was all about Korea’s boys in Europe in the friendly against Vietnam, and all of them will be back on the pitch for their meeting with Singapore. In the Vietnam friendly, Europe-based Son Heung-min, Kim Min-jae, Lee Kang-in, Hwang Hee-chan and Jeong Woo-yeong all netted goals — joined on the scoreboard by an own goal from their opponents in the 51st minute.

Days earlier against Tunisia, 22-year-old Lee scored twice in two minutes to put Korea on the board for what would be their most convincing victory of the season at that point.

The back-to-back wins against Tunisia and Vietnam were needed comebacks for Klinsmann, whose tenure began with a shaky start as the national team dropped games to Uruguay and Peru after drawing their opener with Colombia — then drawing twice more before ending their winless streak with the 1-0 against Saudi Arabia in England.

Singapore is fresh off two wins against Guam in October, qualifying out of the first round to earn a spot in the second round Group C.

“Our opponents in [the second round] are of a higher level than us and we will need to fight together as a team more than ever before if we are to get a positive result against them. However, we must play without fear regardless of the opponent that stands before us,” Singapore national team head coach Takayuki Nishigaya said in a press release last week.

Eight AFC teams will make it to the World Cup through the Asian qualifiers. Korea received a “bye” for the first round and, along with 26 other sides in the 46 member-large AFC, automatically earned a spot in the second, which has nine groups of four teams each.

The top two teams in each group advance to the third round, where 18 teams are split into three groups of six. The winners and runners-up of those groups automatically book a ticket to the World Cup while the third- and fourth-place finishers go into another group stage split, two groups of three.

Those two winners earn the final two AFC spots in the World Cup while the runners-up go head-to-head for a chance to play against a team from a different confederation for one last chance to see the coveted World Cup pitch.

A total of 48 teams will qualify for the expanded 2026 pool, up from 32 teams in Qatar in 2022.

The Korea-Singapore match kicks off at 8 p.m. local time on Thursday at Seoul World Cup Stadium in western Seoul.

BY MARY YANG [mary.yang@joongang.co.kr]