South Korea vs Ecuador: Moreno's First Squad and Kickoff Times
Roberto Moreno lands in Seoul this weekend, and by Monday he has to justify his picks to the entire country. The Korea Football Association confirmed the interim coach arrives September 13 with his full staff and names his first squad the next day at the Korea Football Park in Cheonan. Two home friendlies already went on the calendar back in early August: Ecuador on September 24, and Uruguay four days later. Two more matches, against Venezuela and Uzbekistan in October, round out the block Moreno actually signed up for.
Neither opener is the soft restart you'd expect for a post-World Cup rebuild. Ecuador sits 25th in the FIFA rankings, Uruguay 20th, both a few spots above Korea's own No. 32, and both just played the real World Cup this summer, unlike Korea, whose group-stage exit is the entire reason Hong Myung-bo isn't the one naming this squad. Korea Times has the full backstory on how the fixtures came together.
Here's the confirmed schedule, straight from starnewskorea's report on the KFA's own venue announcement:
| Date | Opponent | Venue | Kickoff (KST) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 24 | Ecuador | Suwon World Cup Stadium | 8:00 PM |
| Sep 28 | Uruguay | Seoul World Cup Stadium | 8:00 PM |
| Oct 2 | Venezuela | Ulsan Munsu Football Stadium | 8:00 PM |
| Oct 6 | Uzbekistan | Yongin Mir Stadium | 8:00 PM |
For anyone watching from outside Korea: 8 PM KST works out to 7 AM US Eastern that same morning, and noon in the UK. Early alarm territory if you want it live instead of highlights over coffee. ESPN already has both matches on its international fixture list, and beIN Sports carries the Uruguay match directly on its own schedule page. The Ecuador match wasn't tied to a single confirmed US broadcaster as of this posting (checked Sept 9). Worth a second look at regional listings closer to kickoff rather than assuming it repeats whatever carried the World Cup group games.
Who Is Roberto Moreno?
Moreno isn't a name most casual Korea fans would recognize, and that's worth explaining rather than skipping past. He spent nine matches as Spain's caretaker coach in 2019 after Luis Enrique stepped away for family reasons, and by most accounts he steadied that squad well enough that it's still the headline credit on his résumé seven years later, per the Korea Herald's rundown. Before that he was Enrique's assistant at Roma, Celta Vigo, and Barcelona — a career built entirely as the second name on someone else's staff.
That's the part that should temper expectations here.
After Spain, Moreno tried running his own team at AS Monaco, then Granada, then Sochi, and none of those jobs produced results anyone's citing now. He's walking into Cheonan as a proven assistant with a short, mixed record as the guy in charge. Good scheduling instincts and calm-hands man-management got him this interim gig; whether he can also make a call under pressure is the open question for September 24.
The Squad Question Nobody's Answered Yet
Moreno's roster doesn't drop until the 14th, so anything about names is a guess right now — flag it as one. The choice in front of him: lean almost entirely on the Europe-based regulars this blog's already covered this month, or use six audition matches to look past them. Two more opponents follow in October, and a fall's worth of form feeds directly into whether Moreno keeps the job through January's Asian Cup evaluation window, so it's worth finding out now rather than in a qualifier that counts for something.
Uruguay is the tougher litmus test of the two. Korea has faced them ten times and has one win, two draws, and seven losses to show for it — a lopsided record even before you account for Uruguay's typical September World Cup afterglow. Ecuador is the more even matchup on paper: this is only the third meeting between the two sides, with the previous two split evenly, Korea's last win a 2-0 result back in 2010. I'd read that as a scheduling gift more than a coincidence: a first-time interim coach picking his opening lineup against a side Korea's actually beaten before, rather than one it's lost to seven times, isn't nothing.
There's a structural problem sitting underneath all of this, too. Moreno's contract runs through November 27 and covers exactly six matches (the four above, plus two more still unscheduled), with a performance clause that can turn "interim" into "permanent through the Asian Cup" if things go well. Two winnable-ish home friendlies in September aren't a fair test of a whole tenure, but they're the only data anyone gets before the calendar tips into October.
If you can only carve out time for one of the four matches, make it the 28th against Uruguay. Ecuador tells you whether Moreno's squad can beat a team it's supposed to beat; Uruguay tells you whether it can hang with one it usually can't.
This is a running news series, not a one-off post — new stories go up twice a day, roughly 7am and 7pm Korea time.
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