Why the KFA Doesn't Have a Training Center
Written by Michael Welch.
This may be a slept upon topic, but that is what I love to write about most. I like writing about topics that people aren’t talking enough about because sometimes that’s where you find the most interesting news.
In 2024, if you didn’t know, the KFA has no training center for their national teams to practice at. Instead, they’ve been using smaller training centers that they have used for youth team training, conducting indoor training sessions at the team hotel, or using public stadium pitches for open training before matches.
You may ask, “Michael, this can’t be that big a deal?” To that I’ll say, I think the national team players would very much beg to differ. During their preparations in Korea for the 2023 AFC Asian Cup (which was held Jan-Feb 2024) in Qatar, the players could only do workouts and tactics sessions in the team’s Korean hotel. They only began on-pitch training in Qatar at their team base. Wouldn’t it have been so much more ideal for them to have been on the pitch in Korea as well?
Well, too bad. Their lease on the Paju National Football Center, their previous training ground, expired in December 2023. The KFA and Paju city government could not agree on new lease terms, with Paju insisting that the KFA pay a yearly rental fee to continue use of the facility. Since its completion in 2001 in advance of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the KFA has been using the Paju NFC rent-free.
My next question was: how much was Paju asking for in rent to continue to use the facility? According to the Korean site 마이데일리, Paju proposed an annual rental fee of 2.6Billion KRW (about $1.9million) for the KFA. Instead of agreeing to that, the KFA elected to rent out the Mokdong Stadium pitch when needed, as well as continue their operations in Mokpo, Cheonan (where the future NFC will be located), and Changwon.
In my opinion, I would have paid the fee to continue to use the Paju NFC until the Cheonan NFC is completed. So now that the Paju NFC is out of the question, what is next for the KFA’s training center? Enter the Cheonan NFC, currently under construction!
Designed by Dutch architecture firm UNStudio, the Cheonan NFC is meant to bring the KNT into the future with a larger footprint and more state-of-the-art facilities than what was on offer in Paju. The KFA hired a European firm to design a training center that would rival some of the best facilities in Europe. I imagine that the KFA had hoped to complete the facility before their Paju lease expired, however construction delays and price rises meant that the facility will not be completed until 2025 at the earliest.
Even looking at the rendering, the footprint of the Cheonan NFC is far larger than what was on offer at Paju. In addition, in the center of the facility are plans for a 1,500 capacity showcase stadium. That stadium could host youth tournament finals and could possibly make a very good home for the Korean women’s national team as well.
I think this facility looks great, but the KFA got their timing absolutely wrong. If they knew they could not move to Cheonan full-time by the expiration of their Paju lease, they should have forked over the cash to continue their stay there temporarily. That’s the truth, plain and simple. The fact that the KFA couldn’t agree with Paju on a new lease makes Chung Mong-gyu and his cronies at the KFA look like cheap penny-pinchers. Chung and the Hyundai people who run the KFA certainly have $1.9mil to spend on annual rent. If they don’t, I’m sorry for being wrong.
For more on the KFA’s new training center, The B1M published a great video with interviews from the designing architects here.
The ideas and renderings of the new center seem grand, but the big question is when the national teams will get to move in? Here’s a photo from April 2024, showing off the construction site.
We just don’t know when construction will finish on the Cheonan NFC, especially because that photo doesn’t depict anything nearing completion. I’ll keep you updated on this story, because I do hope that the KFA can use this new training center to continue their football growth and nurture the next generation of KNT stars!