South Korea’s football coach has revealed he used an unusual tactic to outfox opponents in the run-up to high stakes World Cup games in Russia - swapping players jersey numbers to sow confusion about their identities.

“I heard that Western people don’t recognise Asian people’s faces at once, so that was my little trick to confuse the opponents,” Shin Tae-yong told a press conference in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, ahead of South Korea’s high pressure World Cup opening game against Sweden on Monday evening.

Today’s opener is crucial for both teams, who face tougher matches later in their group against Mexico and Germany, and both have deployed creative tactics to get an edge over each other to win.

Mr Shin’s strategy appears to have been in response to a Swedish spy operation at South Korea’s pre-World Cup training camp in Austria earlier this month, when a member of Sweden’s coaching staff attempted to observe their team sessions.

Lars Jacobsson reportedly persuaded a local couple to let him use their house near the training base to conduct surveillance with a high performance telescope and video camera.

“It took a long car journey up the mountains to reach the house, but it was a perfect spot to observe the Korean team’s training,” he said, according to Reuters.