South Korean international Lee Kang-in, one of the country’s most beloved football stars, is set for his Atletico Madrid debut on home soil this weekend.
Lee and his new Spanish club will face the Premier League giants Manchester City in a preseason friendly match at 8 p.m. Sunday at Seoul World Cup Stadium.
This will be the final match of the fifth edition of the Coupang Play Series, run by the namesake streaming service that brings popular European clubs to South Korea for preseason matches each summer. Atletico Madrid and Man City also squared off in the 2023 Coupang Play Series, with the Spanish side prevailing 2-1.
This year’s fixture was set well before Lee signed for Atletico Madrid in late July. The 25-year-old had played for the French champions Paris Saint-Germain over the past three up-and-down seasons and is now going back to the country where he spent his formative years.
Lee had played for two other La Liga clubs, Valencia CF and RCD Mallorca, before his PSG spell.
Lee was not able to travel out of South Korea join his new Spanish club right away due to some administrative holdup and missed their preseason match against Manchester United in Sweden. In the meantime, Lee had been training at the facilities for the K League 1 club FC Seoul just east of the capital city.
In a clear sign of Atletico Madrid’s faith in him, Lee has inherited No. 7 from the club legend Antoine Griezmann, who now plies his trade in the US-based Major League Soccer. The number is typically given to a team’s star attacking midfielder or right winger, and it has come to represent flair and creativity.
In Sunday’s match, it will bear watching how head coach Diego Simeone will utilize Lee’s vision and passing chops in front of his supporters in Seoul.
In a Spanish interview clip posted on the club’s website this week, Lee said he could hardly wait to finally take the field with Atletico Madrid.
“Over the past few weeks, I have been training at a high intensity so that I can arrive in the best possible shape,” Lee said. “As a player and as a person, I have a winning mentality. I am always ambitious, and always striving to improve and achieve more. For me, the most important thing has always been to help the team, and I am determined to achieve the goals that I have and that the whole team has.”
Lee and his new teammates will be up against Man City, who brought a strong traveling squad despite the absences of two FIFA World Cup heroes, Rodri and Erling Haaland.
Man City defeated Team K League 3-1 in the first Coupang Play Series match Wednesday. First-team players Ruben Dias, Phil Foden and Gianluigi Donnarumma all saw action then.
Played with Seoul gripped by a record-breaking heat wave, Wednesday’s match drew just over 28,000 fans at 66,000-seat Seoul World Cup Stadium, the second-smallest crowd in the series’ history. With temperatures expected to fall slightly over the weekend and with Lee in line for his first Atletico Madrid match, Sunday’s contest is expected to draw more fans. (Yonhap)
