Sweden vs South Korea, World Cup 2018: Andreas Granqvist’s VAR-given penalty leaves Koreans with a bitter taste

Sweden 1-0 South Korea: Referee Joel Aguilar triggered further controversy in a game that was already tarnished by allegations of spying in the lead up to kick-off

South Korea returned home after the last World Cup 2018 to be pelted with toffees by fans disgusted by their failure to win any of their three group games. It’s probably wise for confectioners at Seoul Airport to start stocking up.

It took a penalty awarded with the assistance of the Video Assistant Referee [VAR] to break the deadlock with Sweden football, but the truth is that even before Andreas Grandqvist’s calm conversion, South Korea had never really looked like troubling what, in theory at least, are the weakest of the other three sides in the group. It will take a miraculous improvement against Mexico and Germany if they are to go through now.

The build-up to the game had been oddly tense as a result of allegations that Sweden had spied on South Korea’s closed training sessions and a friendly against Senegal at their pre-tournament camp in Austria. The Sweden manager Janne Andersson said that the coach sent to observe Korea, Lars Jacobson, had believed the training session was open, although he did not deny claims that Jacobson then stayed in a house overlooking the training-ground.

South Korea’s coach Shin Tae-yong reacted to the incursion by having his players wear the wrong-numbered shirts because, he said, “it’s very difficult for westerners to distinguish between Asians.”

The result was a tight, anxious game not helped by the insistence of the Salvadorean referee Joel Aguilar on stopping the game before set plays to advise the players about what level of grappling he would permit. Not until the clock ticked to 20:00 was there a shot: only one World Cup game since 1966 – the Netherlands v Costa Rica four years ago – has endured shotless for so long. When it came, it was a little disappointing as Marcus Berg, having been left untended eight yards out, sidefooted the ball into the thigh of the goalkeeper Cho Heon-woo, a surprise starter ahead of Kim Seung-gyu. Happily the Daegu FC keeper had prepared anyway for the possibility of playing and had his hair styled in a ginger Neymar.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have been overly surprised by the overwhelming sense of drabness. After all, South Korea had scored just 11 and conceded 10 in 10 qualifiers, while Sweden, adept as they proved at hammering Luxembourg and Belarus, qualified for the finals by twice shutting out Italy in a play-off. The strength of both sides is their capacity to resist and the fact that Mexico had blown the group wide open by beating Germany on Sunday wasn’t going to change that.

It may be that the grand plan Shin had been hiding away was about to be revealed. Jung Woo-young was about to come on for Kim Shin-wook 20 minutes into the second half when Kim Min-woo, a first-half substitute for Park Joo-ho, lunged in on Viktor Claesson. Aguilar, who did not have the most distinguished of games, seemed well-placed and initially decided Park had got a toe to the ball, an impression replays appeared to confirm.

There was a recklessness to the challenge, though, and it was presumably that, and the way Park followed through into the Krasnodar winger, that led the referee, after checking the screen, to give the penalty.

Andreas Granqvist tucks home the penalty after the VAR's interference (Getty)

Korea did open up a little after that, and Jung was introduced, but there was no great revelation of previously unimagined sophistication or wonder. Far from whisking back the curtain on some grand invention with a flourish, Shin stood on the edge of his technical area, hands in pockets, head sunk in frustration as his team battered again and again into Sweden’s defences. Lee Seung-woo did prod a last-minute header just wide, but neither he nor Korea ever really seemed gripped by conviction.

With a euphoric Mexico and a wounded Germany to come, they should probably begin preparing for the caramel barrage.