Hong, who plays his club football for FC Pohang Steelers, said goalkeeping coach Chung Yoo-seok played an instrumental role in his performance as Korea Republic exacted revenge on Uzbekistan, having lost to the eventual champions on penalties in the semi-finals of the 2023 edition.

“I have become more and more confident after many training sessions because I managed to save quite a lot of shots in training,” said the 19-year-old Hong.

“Against the first kicker (Karimov), we played against him in 2023 in the U17 tournament (AFC U17 Asian Cup™ Thailand 2023) and the goalkeeping coach also gave information on number 11 (Komilov), which turned out to be correct.

“I’m happy because we managed to beat Uzbekistan because we lost to them in the last tournament. I have to thank my teammates because they have helped improve my game and I’m glad I was able to repay that back with my performance.”

Hong’s brilliance was needed after Korea Republic allowed Uzbekistan back into the game after having taken a 3-1 lead but head coach Lee Chang-won wasn’t perturbed, saying it was all down to inexperience.

“We were not clever enough to manage the game. I asked the players to hold possession as much as possible but they tried to challenge and these things can happen,” said Lee, whose side face Saudi Arabia in the semi-finals. 

Uzbekistan head coach Farhod Nishonov saw the defeat as a missed opportunity but was nevertheless pleased with his team’s overall performance in the tournament.

“My players played very well even though the result in the end wasn’t in our favour,” said Nishonov. “We did train for penalties many times but sometimes football is like that when things don’t go your way.

“We were improving game by game. Had we won this match, maybe we could have been champions again. Overall, I’m very happy with the four games we have played here.”