Woo Yeong-Jeong is a 22-year-old South Korean international currently playing for SC Freiburg in the German Bundesliga. He is predominantly a winger, but has also featured as a 10 or as a centre-forward for Freiburg this season. He generally prefers to play as a right-winger, but can play on the left, and whilst he is officially right-footed, he is comfortable with both.
Yeong-Jeong came through the Incheon youth academy before signing with Bayern Munich in 2018. Starting out with the U19 side, it wasn’t long before he broke into the Bayern Munich II team, however, he was unable to make the step up into the first-team. After joining Freiburg in the summer of 2019 he initially had limited action in the first-team, and even spent more time with Bayern Munich II on loan. Last season he began to feature more frequently, but was still a bit-part player. However, this season Yeong-Jeong has been given a more prominent role and has flourished in a Freiburg side that have exceeded all expectations thus far, and sit only behind Bayern and Borussia Dortmund in the table at this stage.
This tactical analysis and scout report gives an analysis of Yeong-Jeongs strengths and his role in Freiburgs tactics.
Finding space
Regardless of what position he plays, Yeong-Jeong is talented at timing runs into space to either get into an attacking position where he can shoot from, or to find space to create for others.
He stands at just 1.79m in height, but has a knack for finding space in the area and latching onto crosses with accurate headers.
Yeong-Jeong will wait patiently on the edge of the box and wait for an attacker ahead of him to make an early run. Yeong-Jeong sees his teammate dragging his marker with him and he will instinctively make a run in this position. We can see this in the following two images which come against Stuttgart earlier this season. In this example, where he scored his first of two in that game, Yeong-Jeong is arriving on the edge of the box just as his teammate out wide is making the cross.
He times his run perfectly, accessing the space left behind by his teammate to meet the cross. Not only is the run excellent, but to be able to finish from this distance with his head shows a high level of quality.
