Martin Rogers | USA TODAY

USA TODAY Sports

Dimitar Dilkoff, AFP/Getty Images

MOSCOW — South Korea’s World Cup coach Shin Tae-Yong admitted that his team mixed around its jersey numbers for recent training sessions and warm-up games because he believes Westerners find it difficult to “distinguish between Asians.”

Shin made the extraordinary comment ahead of the Koreans’ clash with Sweden in their first game in Group F on Monday night and will also face Germany and Mexico next week, with their opener having been overshadowed by mind games between the teams.

After a Swedish assistant coach admitted that he had rented a house overlooking the Korean training camp in Austria ahead of the tournament and used a long-range telescope to spy on their training sessions, Shin responded by saying that any trickery launched against his team would not matter.

Shin was quizzed by Korean reporters as to why players had been spotted wearing multiple different numbers in practice and friendly games, and said it was a deliberate move to outfox his rivals.

“In my opinion, when Europeans look at us Asians, that could be one of the reasons,” he said. “We wanted to confuse the Swedish team. That’s why we did that.

“We swapped them around because we didn’t want to show our opponents anything. It is very difficult for Westerners to distinguish between Asians and that’s why we did that.”

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The build-up to the game has filled with intrigue. Sweden coach Janne Andersson revealed that one of his assistants had tried to infiltrate a Korean training session, but had left when asked to do so.

However, assistant Lars Jacobsson told Swedish reporters that he had deliberately spied on the Koreans, using technology and an elevated position. “It took a long car journey into the mountains to reach the house,” Jacobsson said. “But it was the perfect spot to observe the Korean team’s training.”

Furthermore, during the game itself, Korea will use an assistant watching from the stands with a headset, a new rule allowed at this World Cup for the first time. The assistant will be allowed to communicate with the bench.

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Highlights from the 2018 FIFA World Cup