Taeguk Ladies look to set the tone with Asian Cup opener against Iran

Korea begins its 2026 AFC Women’s Asian Cup campaign Monday against Iran in Group A play on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Head coach Shin Sang-woo said his team is focused on delivering the results it prepared for during camp, treating the opener as an early measure of its organization and readiness.

“The players and coaching staff have come together as one and prepared with a strong sense of responsibility,” Shin said Sunday at at a press conference at Gold Coast Stadium, one day before the match.

“Since this is the first match of the tournament, we will show on the pitch what we’ve worked on and the effort we’ve put in during training,” he said.

Korea enters the tournament ranked 21st in the FIFA standings, well ahead of Iran at 68th. On paper, the gap favors Korea, but Shin does not expect an easy night.

“Their ranking is lower than ours, but they are well organized. We prepared by focusing on training to deal with their high press,” he said. “As this is our first match, we worked to settle our nerves quickly and put ourselves in a favorable position.”

After Iran, Korea faces the Philippines at noon on Thursday and host Australia at 6 p.m. on Sunday. The 12-team tournament splits into three groups, with the top two from each group and the two best third-place teams advancing to the quarterfinals.

From there, the stakes rise quickly. The four semifinalists secure direct qualification to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil. The four teams eliminated in the quarterfinals move into playoffs, where two more World Cup spots remain available.

Iran's manager, Marziyeh Jafari, kept her focus squarely on football when asked about off-field issues during her own press conference.

“It is not appropriate to speak about those matters at this time,” Jafari said in response to a question about the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as translated by AP.

“There’s a team here for a very important competition that matters to these women and I think those should be the questions," she said.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY PIH JU-YOUNG [[email protected]]

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