Marianne Miettinen, the top football manager of the Swedish Football Association, says that it is really difficult to get information about North Korean players.
Girls’ and young women’s football is dominated by a country that is not usually considered a traditional football powerhouse.
Early on Monday, Finland time, North Korea won the World Cup gold for under-17 girls, when it defeated Spain 4-3 in the penalty shootout in the final match.
– They are a really intense team. They didn’t let us breathe for a second. Playing 90 minutes like that is tough. That is their strength, the Spanish midfielder Irune Dorado wondered.
North Korea won all of their matches in the tournament and conceded only two goals, if the penalty shootout is not counted.
The tournament victory was not a single stroke of luck, but North Korea is used to success. In September, North Korea celebrated the under-20 women’s world championship, and this year the country also won the Asian championship in both age groups.
North Korea has won both the under-17 and under-20 World Cup three times now. No other country has been able to do the same.
Since school
The top football manager of the Swedish Football Association Marianne Miettinen coached Finland in the under-20 women’s games in 2014, when Finland played in the same group as the North Koreans.
– It was very difficult to scout them, because you don’t get a lot of information from there. We received videos of the players from the Asian Championship. The world has very little information about what they do, says Miettinen.
North Korea won the match 2–1 and eventually advanced to the semi-finals. Finland remained a group jumbo.
Miettinen says that he recently discussed the North Korean girls’ teams while working as a consultant for Fifa Margret Kratz with. Kratz was present at the under-20 tournament recently won by North Korea.
According to Kratz, one of the reasons for the North Koreans’ success is that football is strongly involved in the schooling of girls and women.
– They have smelled that this is a sport in which they can succeed and then they invest in it, says Miettinen.
Sports success is exciting
Soccer is the most popular sport in poor North Korea. The country invests its limited resources precisely in girls’ football, because it is easier to succeed in it than in boys’ football, where the level is wider.
The expert interviewed by SVT By Shreyas Reddy according to, it’s basically propaganda. Sports success is important to the dictatorship. He tells an example of a successful U20 tournament.
– Sports success is celebrated throughout the country. When the team arrived in the country, they were received as heroes. There was a huge crowd at the airport, and the team graced the front pages. Kim Jong-un received them. For the youth national team this is a little unusual, but for North Korea it was successful propaganda, Reddy quoth.
Head coach of North Korea’s under-17 team Song Sung-gwon displayed a similar patriotic spirit after the championship was secured.
– We are proud when we beat the best team in Europe and became the best team in the world. We won because of our unity. We learned once again that by fighting together, victory is inevitable, head coach glowed.
Development sucks
The machinery of the state and the educational institution produces technical, skilled and high-quality players, but despite the brilliant performances in the junior leagues, the North Korean women’s A national team has not reached similar success.
According to Miettinen, one of the challenges is that the players cannot leave the closed country. At the youth level, you can still manage with your own action and high-quality training.
– After the next step should be taken, for example, Europeans and Americans get to play tough series games and, for example, the Champions League. In North Korea, only mutual matches are played, that’s why they don’t manage at the women’s level anymore, Miettinen analyzed.