Jae-Sang Jeong is a 20-year-old striker who plays for Daegu F.C. in the K-League. Jeong has played twice for South Korea at youth level and has 2 goals in 24 K-League appearances.
Jeong has a strong physical profile. He is listed as 6’1 (1.88M) and is strong and wiry. Jeong put his physical strength to good use on the pitch. He is very effective at holding the ball up for teammates and winning flick-ons. Even when he does not cleanly win an aerial duel, he generally makes contact with opposing defenders and prevents them from fully clearing the ball. Jeong is reasonably fast, which allows him to keep up with defenders in foot races and bowl them over with his strength if they arrive at the ball at the same time. Jeong is not an elite passer but he generally makes the right decision in transition. His strength and hold-up play also allows him to bounce the ball to teammates and either continue attacks or tee them up for shots. Jeong’s major on-ball weakness is his dribbling. Jeong’s physicality means he can bully his way past a weaker or slower defender but his close control is generally not good enough to hold onto the ball for long while carrying. But, of course, the main thing you want to see in a striker is goals and so far Jeong is not delivering on that front. Jeong’s shot output is very low, though the shots he does get tend to be from reasonably high xG areas. Part of the problem is that Daegu F.C. in general is not that potent of an attacking team. However, Jeong’s off-the-ball movement also has a lot of room for improvement. Jeong often drops deep to link up with teammates, which is fine, but he needs to do a better job of getting back into the box afterward. There are lots of instances where Deagu is breaking into the box but Jeong is still 25 yards from goal or off on the wing somewhere because he made a pass earlier in the build-up and he has not gotten back into the centre-forward position. When Jeong is in the box he generally gets in the right areas. However, his movement isn’t very dynamic and that means that by the time the ball comes to him, he is standing in place instead of attacking the ball and is often marked. Jeong can also be a little bit slow to recognize runs that could result in high danger chances.
On the defensive side of things, Jeong is extremely effective. His strength and relative speed make him very effective at closing players down and knocking them off the ball. He is quite good at using angles to corner opponents and win the ball back. Jeong also tracks back quite a bit and often strips opposition midfield players of the ball.
Jeong does just about everything you want from a striker except for scoring goals. A team that works with him on getting in the box more frequently and making more dynamic runs will surely have an excellent striker on their hands. If he can improve his shot output in terms of frequency and quality then I think he could play for a top club outside of the top-5 leagues. But if that part of his game does not improve it’s hard to see him being anything other than a decent K-League striker.
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