The news from the South Korea camp is Cho Gue-sung has had to turn his phone off.
It was all getting a bit too much being catapulted into a world of daily marriage proposals.
“He had to get some rest,” says Seo Jung-hwan, one of a throng of South Korean journalists who can’t comprehend what’s happened to their team’s No 9. “His phone was going all night. It was keeping him awake. He was trying to concentrate on football and, all the time, the messages were coming.”
In the space of a few days, this “insignificant player” (his own words), has gone strangely viral. Well, maybe not that strangely, seeing as the player in question has pop-star looks and, having scored two headed goals against Ghana in their second World Cup group match, he is more than just a pretty face.
Even so, it has still been a wild story. At the start of the tournament he had around 20,000 Instagram followers. At the time of writing he has 1.6 million. That is despite him only having five posts and not posting since July.
As one of his new admirers wrote on Twitter: “When I first saw his Instagram account he had 40k, now he’s on one million in just a few days. Cho Gue-sung, the powerful man that you are! Thank you for the two beautiful goals and making history today, king. Now, accept my hand in marriage.”
All of which probably shows the power of the World Cup in this age of social media, internet memes and, in this case, hashtag hunks (193 million views, incidentally, for #choguesung on TikTok).
@karasorn He’s number 9 bc im the 1 he needs 🤪#choguesung #worldcup #southkorea #fyp
♬ original sound – nana
Just consider what happened when one South Korean journalist, Yim Hyun-su, posted a clip of Cho sitting on the bench, doing nothing more interesting than unfolding his arms to brush his hand across his left cheek. Yim predicted that Cho was about to see “a crazy surge in followers on Insta”. And he was correct. That seven-second clip, meanwhile, has been watched 7.3 million times. This is not your average story.
Cho Gue-sung’s fancam already has over 6M views lol pic.twitter.com/L4B2JI3Te1
— Hyunsu Yim (@hyunsuinseoul) November 28, 2022
Cho’s story has since been covered by the Indian Express, the Korea Herald and the Scottish Sun. Type his name into Google and it brings up suggestions such as “type of woman Cho likes”, “Cho dating”, “Cho marriage” and “Cho Park”, with many fans comparing his looks to Park Seo-joon, an award-winning actor and heart-throb in his own right.
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Plus it helps that Cho comes across as a sweet boy-next-door type. He is the only South Korean to score in this tournament, but there was not a trace of conceit after his goals against Ghana. “I apologise to the fans who stayed up late to watch the game,” said the 24-year-old who, it has been noted, has a beauty spot just beneath his left eye, the same as South Korea’s most famous player, Son Heung-min.
“South Korean fans have been known to bestow superstar status on their footballers,” says Devon Rowcliffe, author of Who Ate All the Squid? Football Adventures in South Korea. “After the mania of the 2002 World Cup, midfielder Kim Nam-il became an overnight sex symbol. Female fans would hold up placards at matches with racy euphemisms, offering marriage proposals or less formal encounters.”
Where to go next on The Athletic…
- Germany’s World Cup failure: ‘It’s not just bad luck, it’s inability’
- The two sides of the United States men’s national team
The interesting part is where this all might lead — modelling opportunities, TV commercials, maybe a blue tick for Cho on Instagram (yes, he doesn’t even have one yet) — and what comes next for a player who is described by one South Korean journalist as “a nobody” a year ago.
“Going from a few thousand followers on social media to almost two million will certainly put brands on alert as to how they look to work with him to access that audience,” says Josh Hershman, a branding expert with a stellar list of clients from the highest end of the sport.
“It will be interesting to see which brands look to capitalise and how far his reach outside of Asia is impacted. It’s also worth keeping an eye on how he builds his profile from here. What does he stand for? What is he like beyond the pitch? Building that will open more opportunities for him.”
Hershman speaks as the managing director of Ten Toes Media, an agency that has conducted its own research into how standing out in a World Cup can dramatically alter a player’s social-media status. Richarlison, for example, added 3.85 million followers after scoring twice for Brazil in their opening game. Jude Bellingham put on 120,500; Kylian Mbappe 96,700; Olivier Giroud 40,500; Enner Valencia 40,300; and Cody Gakpo 24,200.
The difference with Cho is that, unlike all the players listed above, he did not score in his team’s opening game. He did not even start the match. He came to people’s attention because of his looks, and it is not yet clear what he thinks of that, largely because he is offline and does not have anyone controlling his social media accounts (not yet, anyway). He does though, for the record, have a girlfriend.
His portfolio is growing and, heartbreaking though it might be for his legion of new fans in South Korea, most players in his position want to follow new adventures abroad. At some point, he may even turn his phone back on.
(Top image: design by Samuel Richardson; photograph via Getty Images)