PHNOM PENH, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's new football coach, South Korean Yoo Kee-heung, aims to transform the region's whipping boys into one of the best teams in Southeast Asia, local newspaper reported Monday.
Yoo said he had a proven track record of success, and potholed pitches and a chronic cash shortage will not prevent him from turning the squad of part-timers into a respectable team, according to the Cambodia Daily newspaper.
"I am confident and I want this team to be number one," Yoo said recently during his first training session with Cambodia.
Trained in Brazil and Germany and a former coach with South Korea's 1994 World Cup squad, Yoo has been sent to Cambodia as a gift from a South Korean firm which will pay his yearly salary of 100,000 U.S. dollars, the newspaper said.
Having coached in Bhutan and Nepal, he knows that transforming a winless team sitting 183rd in the FIFA rankings will not be easy.
"This team lacks funding, it needs training equipment. They are too poor, lots of things need to be changed," he was quoted as saying.
Yoo said he had arranged for the Cambodian national team's best players to go to South Korea to train with professional teams.
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