Ji-ho Lee is a 22-year-old winger who plays for Gangwon F.C. in the K-League. Lee is just beginning his professional career after going through South Korea’s university football system and has turned some heads early on in the season.
Lee has decent size, listed at 6’ (1.83 m), but is a fairly mediocre athlete. Lee is not notably fast or strong. I wouldn’t say he totally lacks athletic ability, but this is not what you would be interested in him for. What you would be interested in him for is his off-the-ball movement. Lee is adept at making runs in behind the opposition defence and popping up in dangerous areas in the penalty box. Lee might not be fast but he is quite good at finding the seams in the opposition defence and ghosting into the box unmarked. But on the ball, Lee is not nearly as impressive. However, I would like to see him attack the back post more aggressively when the ball is in wide areas. He does not do this enough for the sort of player he is. He might not be the strongest but being 6 ‘0 should give him an advantage over most fullbacks. Lee’s dribbling is not very good and that combined with his mediocre athleticism gives him very limited options to beat fullbacks. Lee is quite a good crosser of the ball. He makes good decisions about when to put the ball in the box and has good vision to pick out teammates. However, since he can’t dribble very effectively, his ability to put in crosses is very limited. Lee is not very involved in Gangwon’s buildups in general. All of this makes Lee a difficult player to figure out. He is an attacking player who doesn’t really do anything except get on the end of super high xG chances or create them for teammates.
Lee is a fairly effective defensive player. He tracks back to make defensive interventions and does so very effectively. His pressing is generally fine though unspectacular.
After my viewings of Lee, I am still a little uncertain about him. His lack of ability on the ball gives me serious pause. But if he can be 0.5 G+A/90 over the course of his first K-League season that is not nothing. I think I would be a lot more confident in his potential to take another step if the volume of the chances he is involved in was higher. If he can keep getting these chances consistently, I think he could play for a mid-table team in Belgium or the Netherlands. But I would very much be in wait-and-see mode if I were running the recruitment for a team of that level.
Target Scouting 