FA Cup Recap: Hwaseong 0 - 2 Seoul E-Land (aet)

Fans of the 'beautiful game' may want to look away for this, but every now and then we are reminded that sometimes simple and effective works too. After 105 minutes of watching E-Land huffing and puffing with limited effect, it was Glory who finally put all those afternoons spent watching livestreams of Scottish League Two to good effect, channeled his inner Sunday League player and hoofed a long high ball from his own half into the Hwaseong box. It bounced at least once on it's way through to the smallest man on the park, Tarabai, who managed to get just enough of his head on it to guide it past Jeong Min-kyu in the Hwaseong goal.

That it took a bit of anti-football to break down Hwaseong's defence was probably fitting. I would accuse them of parking the bus but the reality is that for large parts of the match none of the men in orange could get out of their own penalty box let alone into the car park to drive the coach into the ground. I have to confess that I missed the first half of the match due to other commitments and the half-time highlights made it look as if Hwaseong might have shown some early promise but the rest of the game was fairly dire stuff from them. With crowds dwindling in the K-League it's probably a good thing that only 250 people made it along to this one as they'll surely never want to return to watch another match.

E-Land had made several changes to the team with Gu Dae-yeob, Yang Ki-hoon, Jeon Min-gwang, Kim Chang-wook, Ahn Tae-hyun and Cho Woo-jin all being given the chance to start the match. It was possibly one or two changes too many as the team seemed to struggle to gel somewhat but in reality the issues were largely the same as the ones that had plagued the team at the weekend against Goyang. They looked fairly comfortable in possession and were never really tested at the back but in the final third things just fell apart at crucial times. For all their possession, the Hwaseong keeper was never really tested for most of the match.

Joo Min-kyu, Tarabai and Kim Jae-sung were all brought in to the fray in an effort to get the goal but there wasn't too much improvement as the game slipped into extra-time. Kim Min-jae came on and made a bit of a difference in providing some width and crosses into the box and almost immediately came close to paying dividends when Kim Jae-sung hit the post. It took the more agricultural intervention of Glory to finally break the deadlock though.

Tarabai nicks in to grab the opening goal as the Hwaseong defence are static

After that, Hwaseong showed a bit of life and tried to attack E-Land in an effort to claw themselves back into the match but it was never quite enough to really threaten. As they pushed forward to get the equaliser they left space a the back and a quick counter from Ahn Tae-hyun right at the death was neatly finished to put the tie to bed at 2-0.

It wasn't pretty but the result is all that really counts in the Cup so I'm sure E-Land will be happy enough to progress even if the performance was fairly unconvincing. Next up is a home tie against the winners of Sungkyungkwan University v Incheon University so E-Land should be strong favourites to make it through to the last 16. That first derby match with FC Seoul is still a possibility then, but we might want to save that for the final!