South Korea will actively consider hiring a foreign national to lead its football team, a senior official said Tuesday.

Hwangbo Kwan, head of the technical committee at the Korea Football Association, said the vacant job is open for coaches from home and overseas, but officials will have “some concrete discussions” on foreign candidates.

“We’re going to look at different names,” Hwangbo said following a meeting of his committee at the National Football Center here, north of Seoul. “But a lot of our members said we should first look at some candidates from overseas.”

Hwangbo’s words came five days after Cho Kwang-rae was dismissed as the national team head coach amid controversy. Cho claimed that the KFA didn’t take proper steps to fire him because the technical committee, which has the right to hire or fire national team coaches, didn’t convene a meeting to discuss his status.

Hwangbo said he’d only spoken to senior KFA executives, but not technical committee members, before deciding to fire Cho. Hwangbo added the technical committee hadn’t been fully formed in time to dismiss the coach. The committee only took shape Monday with seven members under Hwangbo and Tuesday’s meeting was their first.

KFA officials have said South Korea’s 2-1 upset loss to Lebanon in the ongoing Asian qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup sealed Cho’s fate, since it has jeopardized South Korea’s chances of further advance.

In Group B, South Korea remains in first place with 10 points, and top two nations from each of the five groups in the current round will advance to the fourth and final stage. South Korea will be eliminated from the qualification, however, if it loses to Kuwait and if Lebanon defeats or draws the United Arab Emirates in their games in February.

With only two months left before the crucial game, Hwangbo said the new coach must be experienced.

“We need a coach who has led a national team before,” the official said. “It has to be someone who can maximize players’ talent over a short period of time, who can be in full control of the team, and who can fuel further development of Korean football.” 

(Yonhap News)