After scoring twice against Ghana in the Qatar World Cup group-stages this week, Cho Gue-Sung was forced to turn his phone off due to a never-ending flurry of messages he was receiving from adoring fans.
“He had to get some rest,’ reporter Seo Jung-hwan said, via the Daily Mail. “His phone was going all night. It was keeping him awake. He was trying to concentrate on football and, all the time, the messages were coming.”
Now, as of yet, there is no confirmation about exactly how many of those messages arrived from Celtic supporters hoping to see Cho Gue-Sung seal a January move to Parkhead.
But, with Scottish Sun reporting that the Jeonbuk Motors forward is a leading candidate to replace the departing Giorgios Giakoumakis at the Premiership champions, excitement surrounding Cho’s potential arrival is certainly growing in Glasgow’s East End.
Celtic like South Korea’s World Cup striker Cho Gue-Sung
“Gue-Sung definitely has the talent to succeed on the big stage,” says Ko Jeong-Woon, who coached Cho at FC Anyang earlier in his career.
“People put in less effort the higher they go up. Gue-Sung was not like that. So he became the top scorer in the K-League this year, and he also exploded at the World Cup.
“We tell our players that they have to be at that level to be a soccer player.”
It’s not just Cho’s finishing skills that have caught the eye in Qatar either. As pointed out by stats website FBREF, no one in the group stages won more aerial duels than the 24-year-old’s 18. A tally that looks all the more impressive when you consider that the next best, Ecuador’s Michael Estrada, comes in at second with just 13. Robert Lewandowski is joint-third on 12.
Standing at 6ft 2ins, Cho is one inch taller than Giakoumakis. He’s arguably a more all-round centre-forward too; a more effective link-man, and a supplier of chances as well as a taker of them. In addition to his 21 goals for Jeonbuk Motors in the 2022 campaign, Cho also produced five assists. Giakoumakis, across his entire Celtic career, has just two to his name.
Giakoumakis will be a loss to Celtic. But there’s no reason why a replacement cannot also be an upgrade.
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