News feed Tuesday January 10th, 2012: La Masia to come to Korea

If you are a fan of Korean football, you most likely have heard the names Baek Seungho, Jang Gyeolhui, and Yi Seungwu--a triplet of youths now training in FC Barcelona's youth academy. The trio of next-Lionel Messi hopefuls at 'La Masia', as the academy is known, were all playing in Korea no longer than two years ago. After Baek made the initial move to Catalonia back in 2010, Jang and Yi soon followed by joining the club's Cadette A side last year. The three players have impressed so much at FC Barcelona, that the club decided to open Korea's own FC Barcelona academy at Pocheon--a small town located an hour north of Seoul.

Teaming with an academy once known as 'FC Kim Heetae Football Center', the newly formed 'FC Kim Heetae Barcelona Football Center' will serve not only as a training facility to many of the country's top youth footballers, but also as a full-time academic institution. Its students will receive all-year long tutelage from Barcelona-trained coaches at the academy, as well as one-on-one English and Spanish lessons, meanwhile attending one of three nearby schools designated to them during daytime.

Gim Huitae, the founder of the academy and the former manager of Myungi University, is most famous for recruiting then little known Bak Jiseong and grooming him into a national U23 team player. Gim is also known for coaching An Jeonghwan during their days at Ajou University. Here are other news around Korean football today:

• Korean international Yi Geunho will move to Ulsan Hyundai FC after a long awaited anticipation. The deal looked to be off last weekend when Daegu FC, Yi's last club in K-League, and Ulsan could not come to terms on the transfer fee, but the deal was completed last night when Ulsan agreed to send former Chievo Verona reserve Yi Jinho and cash to Daegu.

• Yi Yeongpyo, who is in training with FC Seoul to prepare for the upcoming season, made the headlines yesterday by finishing second out of all players during the squad shuttle run. The 35 year old Vancouver Whitecap recorded 185 completions in the 21 metre shuttle run and was only out-done by one unnamed player believed to be a youth prospect.

• In his column at Nate, John Duerden expressed the need for the K-League to sort out the Yi Cheonsu debacle, comparing the 115-paged report by The Football Association (the governing body of football in England) on Luis Suarez's racism eviction to K-League's ignorance and otherwise emotional approach to the on-going conflict surrounding Yi and Chunnam Dragons. Duerden accused the league of being irresponsible and demanded them for actions. Meanwhile, another columnist at Nate, Gim Hyeonhoe, defended Chunnam for their decision not to permit Yi's transfer.