It’s been 14 years. A miracle happened.
On the 27th of last month, the Daedong Tax Office located in Jongno-gu, Seoul, won the runner-up in the 2023 Spring National High School Soccer Tournament.
The history of the soccer team at Daedong Tax Office is long. Founded by director Choi Chang-guk in 1991, it has been going on for 32 years. However, the poor environment is a pity. Even in the midst of that, it is coach Park Min-seo (47) who made the players into a “one team” and produced the result of a runner-up in the national competition.
Director Park has been leading at Daedong Tax Office for 11 years. He served as a coach for 7 years before taking over as head coach in 2020. The first thing coach Park cared about was, of course, ‘recruitment of players’. Coach Park recalled in an interview with Sports Chosun, “Three years ago, I really sold my feet to select good players in the 3rd year of middle school. I selected players who could go up to a professional team in a normal school.”
In the past three years, only three students transferred to Daedong Tax Office to play soccer. That’s proof that the first player scout went well. Director Park laughed, saying, “The principal liked the results, saying that the players who entered the school three years ago had good grades.
While coach Park prepared for this tournament, the focus was on preventing injuries and completing partial tactics. Coach Park explained, “If we had been training for games in the winter, this time we only played 5 games in 27 days. We tried hard not to get injured and tried to improve the perfection of tactics for each position.”
There was also a ‘special helper’ for the runner-up at Daedong Tax Office. Cheol-Woo Choi was the former coach of Seoul E-Land. Coach Park said, “I completed the partial tactics with the help of former coach Choi, who is a junior at Korea University. In particular, Ha Jung-woo, a tall striker of 1m89, saw the effect of former coach Choi’s one-point lesson. Weight training gained strength, so speed increased. It got faster,” he said, thanking him.
In the meantime, after coach Park took the baton of Daedong Tax Office, the best performance in the national competition was the quarterfinals. Coach Park confessed, “The gap between the starting and non-starting players was huge. Because I couldn’t rotate, the quarterfinals were my limit.” 메이저사이트
In fact, if you look at the environment of the soccer club, rising to the quarterfinals is a great achievement. It is the only playground among high school soccer teams in downtown Seoul that has a ‘bare ground’. In addition, the size of the soccer field is not the basic standard. However, coach Park did his best in the given environment. He said, “Previously, I borrowed an outside playground to train. Still, the school principal is very interested. In 2025, we decided to lay artificial turf.” He also said, “I am receiving a lot of help from the parents of current students and the alma mater’s alumni association. Thank you.”
During his active career, coach Park played with “Phantasy Star” Ahn Jung-hwan at Daewoo Royals (now Busan I-Park). Although the university was different, coach Park, who had maintained a close relationship with Ahn Jung-hwan, said, “Last year, around this time, Jung-hwan hyung helped one of our school players with the proceeds from YouTube. Thank you very much.”