GUADALAJARA, Mexico — For an hour South Korea did everything but score, and then Hwang In-beom decided the game would not get away. He cut inside off Lee Kang-in’s pass in the 67th minute, faked the defenders out of his path, and clipped a finish inside the post, and a match the Czech Republic had led tilted for good. South Korea won 2-1 on Thursday night, their first victory in a World Cup opening match since 2010.
The result puts South Korea level with Mexico at the top of Group A after the co-hosts opened the tournament with a win of their own, and it was built on the kind of dominance the scoreline understates. The Koreans took 62 percent of possession at the Estadio Akron and completed 464 passes to the Czechs’ 242, nearly double. What they lacked, for an uncomfortable stretch, was the finish.
The discomfort had a source. Czech captain Ladislav Krejci had headed his side ahead in the 59th minute, rising to meet a long Vladimir Coufal throw hurled into the box, the one route the Czechs had found all night turned suddenly lethal. For a team that had controlled everything except the goal, falling behind to a set-piece long-throw was the cruelest possible way to trail.
Hwang’s equalizer arrived eight minutes later and changed the texture of the match entirely. From level, South Korea pressed, and in the 80th minute Hwang turned creator, slipping the ball in from the right for Oh Hyeon-gyu to convert from close range. A goal and an assist from the same player, in the span that decided the game.
Hong Myung-bo, the South Korea coach, found the meaning in the manner rather than the margin. “The win itself makes me happy,” he said, “but what’s even more positive is that our boys won by not giving up.” His counterpart Miroslav Koubek did not dispute the verdict, conceding that “probably the better team won” while insisting the Czechs “could have had a better outcome” without “some mistakes.”
The night was not flawless for the winners. Son Heung-min, the captain and the most famous player on the field, had two clear chances and converted neither, a reminder that South Korea’s talisman is now carrying his fourth World Cup on legs that have run a long way. The Czechs nearly snatched a point of their own when Tomas Soucek headed home in the 77th minute, only for the goal to be ruled out for offside. The margin between the comeback and a 2-2 draw was a few inches and a VAR line.
This is South Korea’s 11th consecutive World Cup, a run of qualification matched by only a handful of nations, and the early evidence suggests this squad intends to do more than appear. The midfield control was real, the comeback nerve was real, and in Hwang they have a player who decided a tournament opener almost single-handedly. What is not yet settled is whether Son rediscovers his finishing, because a team this dominant cannot keep leaving two clear chances on the grass and trusting Hwang to cover for them.
Group A now has two teams on three points and a tournament that, in its Mexican half at least, has begun with noise and goals. South Korea will not get an easy night the rest of the way. But they got the one that matters most, the opener, the one that decides whether a group stage is spent chasing or leading, and they got it by refusing to lose a game they had already won everywhere but the scoreboard.
