Russian-born goalkeeper adds multicultural touch to Korean soccer

Over the years, countless people have landed on Korean shores to work or play. Some stay a short while, others never leave, and some become Korean citizens. Russian native and Korean football club Busan IPark goalkeeper coach Valeri Sarychev originally came for work but ended up taking an oath to the Korean motherland.


Like all who did so before him, Sarychev was obliged to choose a Korean name after getting his Korean citizenship in 2000. Yet the man who rose to national stardom in the 1990s by defending the goal for several championship teams in Korea had his official name chosen for him by his fans. Not long after he first suited up, Koreans recognized that Sarychev's talent for keeping the ball out of the net was, well, divine. Thus he was soon dubbed Shin Eui-son, which means “hand of God” in English.

“It wasn’t what I picked, I saw it on TV one day next to my Russian name,” he recalls. “All the fans called me ‘Shin Eui-son, Shin Eui-son.’ When I applied for citizenship later, the head coach said, ‘This name’s very good for you.’” And so it stuck.

Starting a trend

Born and raised in Tajikistan, the 53-year-old Sarychev was a standout right out of high school, playing professionally at age 18 for his hometown team and then for the Soviet pro team CSKA Moscow.

It wasn’t until 1992 that Sarychev, along with his wife and two children, came to Korea to play for the Seoul-based club Ilhwa Chunma. It was an unusual move for a Korean team to hire a foreign keeper, as most clubs with foreign talent generally choose strikers or midfielders to lead them down the field. The gamble paid off. In Sarychev’s first year, Ilhwa took second in the K-League Cup before going on to win three consecutive league titles. Coaches around the league took notice. “Other teams started thinking, ‘What is Ilhwa doing, they’re winning everything in Korea. Maybe it’s better to buy one goalkeeper and win everything,” says Sarychev. “In 1996, almost every club bought a foreign goalkeeper.”

The trend alarmed Korean soccer’s governing body, which feared an inability to develop Korean goalies for international play. “For the Korean soccer federation, this was a headache because if you hire a foreign goalkeeper, who will play for the Korean national team? This was a big problem,” Sarychev says.

To tackle the situation, the league implemented a strict policy designed to phase out foreign goalkeepers.

“They made a rule especially for foreign goalkeepers,” Sarychev says. “In 1996, foreign goalkeepers could only play in 70 percent of the games. In 1997, it was 50 percent and in 1998, we could play no more than ten games.”

Becoming a Korean national

This didn’t bode well for Sarychev, who had yet to receive Korean citizenship and whose life here depended on having a job.

In 1999, the LG Cheetahs (now FC Seoul) asked him to coach the team’s goalkeepers. That decision would have a profound effect on Sarychev’s future.

“After a year coaching, the LG (head) coach asked me, ‘How would you like to play goalkeeper? Maybe you want to play again?’” Sarychev says. “I asked him how, and he said I should take Korean citizenship. I thought he was joking.”

The coach wasn’t. So in 2000, after cramming for the test under the tutelage of LG-appointed instructors, Sarychev officially became Shin Eui-son, a naturalized Korean citizen.

With that technicality out of the way, he took to the field as the team’s goalie and lead them to the championship his first year in front of the net.

He retired four years later, and after stints coaching teams including Goyang Daekyo Women’s FC and the national under-20 team, he settled in Gimhae, just outside of Busan, not far from IPark’s training facility.

As for his future in Korea, it’s day by day for God’s hand. “I wake up today, I think about tomorrow, I wake up tomorrow, I think about the next day. That’s my life.”

* Article from Korea Magazine (October 2013)