The Wonderkids of La Masia #1

Lee Seung Woo — South Korea

Info

Birthday: 06.01.1998 (17 y/o)

Position: Forward

Nationality: South Korean

Been at Barca since: August 2011

Favorite number: 10

Idol: Lionel Messi

Release clause: €3m, but it’ll rise to €12m when he gets promoted to Barça B

Lee

The offensive wonderkids are pumping out from every corner of Asia. With their quick feet, great workrates and high discipline level, you can’t really go wrong when you, as a scout, are out hunting for new talent for their clubs.

Lee Seung Woo is a prime example of these Asian phenomenons. With his shear speed, technical ability, eye for goal, light touch in around the box and positivity on and off the pitch, he is arguably the biggest prospect in Barcelona’s beloved Cantera. BarcaTV journalist Jaume Marcet describes him as “a striker with a midfielder’s soul”.

When Lee was 12, a Barca scout spotted him in South Korea, during the 9-a-side mini World Cup back in October 2010. The things he noticed about him was his speed, dribling and his ability to bag in goal after goal. The Barcelona scout had to set Lee up for a move to La Masia quickly because Real Madrid and a couple of clubs from the Bundesliga were also interested. Fortunately for Barça, Lee chose the Catalans instead of the other offers he got.

Back in Korea, Lee was a massive star in under 13 and 15 football. He managed to score 29 goals in 16 matches in the West Seoul Division, 11 goals in 6 matches during the knockout stages and after that, he was awarded with the ‘Cha Boom’s youth player MVP of the year’. With the U-15 side, he scored 38 goals and made 18 assists in just 29 games.

Similar to Messi?

Putting this in to perspective, Messi scored 37 goals in 30 appearances at a similar age. No wonder people have given Lee the nickname: “The Korean Messi”. Such a cliché, I know.

In truth, his playing style isn’t that similar to Leo’s, but his ability to score goals is the same as Messi’s when he was younger, if not better. Lee is a huge fan of him and when he was asked on an opinion on him, he said:

“I watch Messi very closely. I want to be a perfect player just like him. My goal is to try my absolute best to become the first Korean to play for Barcelona’s senior team”.

Like Messi, Lee starts from the striker position and always drops back to receive the ball from his teammates, linking up with them and driving the ball forwards with his exceptional dribbling and close control. In that sense, they’re definitely similar. Same goes for their goalscoring records.

Suspended by FIFA

In March 2013, Lee and a few other internationals were unfairly banned by FIFA from participating in official competitons for the club upon complaints from an “unnamed club” (some conspiracies say that it was Real Madrid), stating that FIFA laws prevent clubs from signing international footballers under the age of 18.

“The rules for the signing of minors are very clear. The popularity of football also brings some dangers. The financial success of our sport makes it, unfortunately, of interest to international mafias, who get rich due to illicit activities like match-fixing or tricking underprivileged kids with false promises of a professional career in Europe”, the FIFA-president Sepp Blatter said.

To their defense, Barcelona point to the fact it was the Korean FA that offered Lee, and two other footballers Paik and Jang to the club. The issue is yet to be fully resolved, but these players will continue to train with the club and take part in friendlies until then.

To add a dash of controversy, Catalan paper ‘Sport’ is reporting that cases like these are rare, as FIFA hardly interferes in such affairs, unless a complaint or allegation from another body or club is received. When a player like Lee is performing like he has done ever since he came, it’s not hard to see why other clubs would want to potentially eliminate the South Korean’s opportunity to grow and integrate to the Barcelona system, making the chances for him to succeed smaller. Keep in mind, however, that this is mostly speculation and should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.

According to FIFA, the suspension of the players will be cancelled if:

1) The player’s parents move to the club’s country for non-football related purposes.

2) The players lives 50km from a border shared by the club’s country, with the club being within 50km of that same border.

The star of his generation

Ever since he joined, he’s been the mian factor of generation 1998's big succes. Already in his first tournament with Barca in the Summer of 2011, Lee scored 13 goals in 10 games and was chosen as the MVP of the Torneo de Canillas.

In May 2012, MD wrote a small article on him, in which they wrote: “14 year old is the star of Infantil A” saying he’s more than a goalscorer, despite 36 goals in 26 games with five hat-tricks included, and that he is known for excellent speed, intelligence of movement (with and without the ball) and a prototypical La Masia team mate.

Later that month, his team played with the under 15 side, Infantil A, in the Lennart Johansson Trophy and won the competition, scoring 17 goals and conceding 0 goals with him being the top scorer. He impressed to say the least, scoring a brace in the semi-final against Dutch side Vitesse and then a goal in the final against Red Star Belgrade which Barca won 2-0.

In general, he has been playing in lot of different friendly tournaments to keep in form. In October 2013, he scored a goal and an assist in the Copa Internacional del Caribe final.

Suspension on and off

2014 has been a bit of a rollercoaster for Lee, to say the least. At the end of the 2013/14 season, the young South Korean was with the league winning Juvenil B side, despite being eligible for the Cadet A. Even though it’s a good achievement, he still wasn’t allowed to play any official matches at the club because of the ban imposed by FIFA.

But during the summer, the ban was temporarily removed on all the suspended youth players, while CAS were coming up with a final solution to the transfer ban imposed on Barcelona. Despite of this, Lee and the other youngsters would’ve played during the summer anyways since all the games were friendlies.

Lee was promoted to the Juvenil A and played a couple of friendly tournaments with the team. These tournaments weren’t a success for the team and Lee had a tough time. He didn’t score any goals and his impact on the games were minimal.

Meanwhile, CAS decided to extend the deadline for the final decision regarding Barcelona’s transfer ban, and the youngsters were once again suspended from playing any official matches for the Catalan club.

Star of the Asian Championship

Shortly after the pre-season came to an end, Lee went back to South Korea to prepare for the U-16 Asian Championship with the South Korean national team. Together with his Barcelona team mate Jang Gyeol-Hee, also suspended by FIFA, they went on to become key players in South Korea’s run to the final.

Despite being suspended from the first game because of too many yellow cards during qualifiers, Lee went on to score two goals in the two group games he played, both ending up being match deciding goals. And it wasn’t regular goals either. Both of those goals were created by Lee himself after some terrific individual brilliance.

On came the knockout stages, and in the quarter-final against Japan, Lee scored both of the goals in South Korea’s 2–0 win. His second goal of the match was a rather easy one-touch goal but the first one was as good as a solo goal gets and definitely the goal of the tournament. Lee recieved the ball on his own half, sprinted past the midfielders, dribbling past three out of four Japanese defenders, before taking the ball past the helpless goalkeeper and putting it in to the back of the net. One could say it was Maradona-Messi-esque.

Then the semi-final against Syria came and it ended up being a 7–1 thrashing of the poor Syrians, and once again, Lee was the main man. He scored a penalty and made four (!) assists. Again, it wasn’t just regular stuff. All the assists were pretty well executed. But in the final against North Korea, Lee was physically beaten by the hard-hitting defenders who didn’t give the spaces Lee would’ve hoped for, including some pretty nasty tackles. In the end, North Korea won 1–0, but despite a rather disappointing final, Lee was deservedly awarded as the MVP of the tournament. He was also the top goalscorer.

Since Lee already plays at a higher age level, at a much higher team level, these performances shouldn’t really come as the biggest surprise, but even so, Lee showed why he is one of the best talents in the world under the age of 18.

Future economical profit

Economically, Lee can also become very important in the future. The Asian market is huge and if he continues likes this, Barça will definitely use his marketing potential in Asia, especially South Korea, and earn enormous sums of money in a market which only gets more and more profitable. We saw this with Park Ji-sung when he was a key player for Manchester United.

Lee Seung Woo is definitely a player that we should keep an eye on for the future, but I’m afraid that the ban, which has kept him away form official matches in two years now, might have had an effect to Lee’s development. However, the talent is definitely there and hopefully he will still develop in to an important first team player. He has the potential for it.

Video of his abilities by @Youngcules

His highlights from the U-16 Asian Championship by me