There can’t be many footballers who have gone from playing for a military team to the cover of Vogue in a few months.
But that’s just one of the ways life has changed for South Korean striker Cho Gyu-sung over the past year.
Last year was good for Cho. He joined Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, one of Korea’s top teams, in 2020, but it took a while for him to find his feet. He was a defensive midfielder until a few years ago, moving forward to take better advantage of his 6 ft 2 in (188 cm) height and pace, but he was still relatively young in the position.
As Korean players sometimes do, he used his mandatory period of military service as somewhat of a reset and to help improve his physical condition. He joined Gimcheon Sangmu on loan from Jeonbuk – a team consisting of military service players who were in the second tier at the time, where he rediscovered his form and started scoring goals again, helping them achieve promotion. Got help.
He also received a call-up to the national team and by the latter half of the year, he returned to his parent club, finishing as joint top scorer in the K League 1 (level with Joo Min-kyu) and setting the World Cup in Qatar closer. Upon his arrival, he established himself as one of the main forward options for South Korea.
However, even then, he was relatively low-key – “insignificant”, in his own words, known mainly by Korean football fans, but not by many beyond that.
But then the World Cup came and everything was different.
“There have been a lot of changes in the last year,” explains Cho, 25. athletic Now, there’s a lot of understatement being used. “But I’ve enjoyed them.”
In Qatar, Cho was brought into the South Korea squad for their second game against Ghana and he scored twice despite his team losing 3–2. But it was during the first game against Uruguay – in which he played only 16 minutes as a substitute – when the madness began.
That’s when people started noticing that he was, for want of a more elegant phrase, smoking a lot. Shots of them sitting on the sidelines and warming up quickly circulated on social media, proving that if the Internet is good at nothing else, it’s spreading images of very attractive people.
TikTok was flooded with clips celebrating her beauty, with videos of Cho doing outrageous things like walking on the side of a football pitch and sitting with folded hands. It didn’t matter what he was doing; It seems the Internet finds even the most mundane activities extremely sexy.
Before the tournament he had around 20,000 followers on Instagram. This increased to about 1.6 million during the World Cup and then to about 2.7 million thereafter. It doesn’t matter that he barely posts on it; Any image of his broad shoulders and razor cheekbones was worth following.
The story was that he had to turn off his phone for most of the tournament because dealing with notifications became a full-time job, although Cho ignored this. “It’s a bit exaggerated,” he says. “I had already turned off my notifications (before the World Cup) so I could focus on the tournament.”
There was a danger that sudden celebrity and sex-symbol status might hinder his focus, but Cho claims the only pressure was self-imposed.
“There were no hindrances during the World Cup. I was just concentrating on football. I usually don’t care about people’s high expectations, but I put a lot of pressure on myself, which became a bit of a burden.
Cho further enthralled the spectators by telling Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo not to leave the pitch too early when he was substituted in their final group game.
South Korea reached the group but was eliminated in the round of 16 after losing 4-1 to Brazil. His World Cup was over, but things were just getting started for Cho.
He became the fifth man and second player to appear on the cover of Vogue Korea, shot in moody black and white, holding a football but casually forgetting to wear a shirt. His celebrity started touching the sky.
He was sought after for TV appearances, as a guest on a Korean show called I Live Alone, which is designed to go behind the scenes of a celebrity’s life and, apparently, is not as bleak as it sounds. The title shows, and the popular quiz show Quiz on You also blocks.
He reached celebrity levels where his personal beauty choices caused quite a stir. In September, photos of her hair in cornrows sparked a lengthy internet debate. In a poll, he was voted the second most desirable Korean male celebrity after actor Song Kang. And, of course, speculation about his personal life ran rampant, with stories linking him to various models and celebrities during and after the World Cup.
Cho seemed to be dealing with it all relatively well, even if he found it quite worrying at times. South Korea played a few matches in Britain in September and could not escape people’s attention there too.
“Since I became more famous, a lot of people have recognized me. When I traveled to London with the national team people started recognizing me – it was really amazing.
It’s no surprise that he’s been seen out and about, but it seems he’s been ‘causing a minor riot in the local coffee shop area’, even when he’s trying to go out in disguise. tries to. “When I come back to Korea, I wear a hat and a mask but people still recognize me,” he says. “Once, people started following me on the street. That was madness.”
Thirsty members of the public weren’t the only people following him. After his goals for Jeonbuk and his performances in Qatar, he was flooded with offers from people who wanted him for his goals rather than his looks.
However, Cho took his time. “In the winter transfer window, there were many offers from many different clubs, but I waited until the summer. There were several informal proposals from England and Scotland. But once I made my decision, I stuck to it.
Leicester City, Watford and Celtic were said to be among a number of teams interested, but in the end, he made the perhaps slightly surprising choice of signing for Midtjylland in Denmark, who picked him up for a relatively modest £2.6 million ($3.27m). ,
It makes one wonder whether they chose Denmark, as it has been given a bit more importance in terms of attention, following their explosion of fame and inability to walk down the street without causing an incident back home.
However, he says this was not a factor. “I wasn’t afraid of media attention, but I just wanted to focus on football. I wanted a club where I could start every game. I was sure that Midtjylland could offer me this. Midtjylland had the most interest, so I chose them.
Luckily, he knows some people who have been in similar situations who can give him advice on how to deal with his sudden fame. No matter how famous Cho becomes due to his looks, it is unlikely that he will reach god-like status like his international captain Son Heung-min.
Cho has also benefited from a mentor – another countryman who became an icon in South Korea and faced the delicate decision of choosing the right club when he moved to Europe.
“Park Ji-sung is the director of my old club, Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors,” says Cho. “He didn’t give me advice about dealing with fame, but he gave me a lot of advice about going to Europe, making a new life there. He told me to choose a team where I knew I would play, because that’s what he did when he moved to PSV Eindhoven.”
Looks like Cho made a smart choice. Midtjylland are top of the Danish Superliga as of the winter break, and have eight goals in 16 league games.
Who knows if his football achievements will ever match his level of fame, but it seems Cho isn’t thinking too much about it.
“Instead of looking towards the future, I consider how to live my everyday life and be happy now. I don’t think about it right now.”
(Top photo: Eric Verhoeven/Socrates/Getty Images)
