Hyeon-yong Lee is a 21-year-old centre-back who plays for Suwon F.C in the K-League. Lee joined Suwon in 2024 from K3 side Sihueng City and seems to be establishing himself as a fairly regular starter this season. His performances in K-1 have led to a call-up for South Korea’s U-22 team, potentially giving him the chance to make the Asian Games team, where winning a gold medal could earn him a military service exemption.
Lee is listed as 6’2/1.92M and has a fairly muscular build. Lee’s most exciting quality is his ability to win duels. Lee is an absolute monster in aerial duels thanks to his physical strength, jumping ability, and heading. At the K-League level, Lee simply negates most efforts to play aerial balls into his area of the box. Lee is also very good at ground duels. He is a strong 1v1 defender. He is very agile for his size and that makes it hard to get Lee turned around or to beat him on the dribble. He is very effective at shepherding dribblers into wider areas and denying them entry to the danger zones. Lee is also a shot-blocking machine, which I attribute to his strong defensive positioning and just being a pretty big guy. However, Lee is a very passive defender. He does not look very comfortable in situations where he needs to step forward and make defensive interventions. He is often too tentative to make interventions which means he steps out too slowly and then gets stuck in no-man’s land, unable to get to the ball or to backtrack into position in time. He looks much more comfortable defending off the back foot than trying to win the ball proactively.
On the ball, Lee is quite a mediocre player. Suwon does not involve him in build-up very often and when they do he is usually playing short sideways passes or playing the ball long. The silver lining of this is that he does not give the ball away in dangerous areas very often. However, it is very rare to see him progressing the ball through passing or carrying. Lee is yet to score a goal in K-1 but he scored a couple in K-3 and his aerial ability makes him a potential target for set-pieces.
If Lee can win a gold medal at the Asian games and get a military service exemption I could see him taking a solid step up from the K-League. His lack of ability on the ball will limit how high he can go but he could be a good fit for a direct and physical league like the Scottish Premiership.
Target Scouting 