In-Woo Baek is a 19-year-old attacking midfielder who plays for Ulsan HD FC in the K-League. Baek has recently broken through as a first-team regular. He has played for South Korea extensively at youth level.
Baek is listed at 5’9″ (1.82 m) and has a slight build. He is usually deployed as either a withdrawn striker or on the left, though he is right-footed. In the games I watched, he looked significantly better when playing centrally. Baek is relatively quick and good at carrying the ball into space. However, his dribbling is quite limited at this stage. So, as soon as he runs into any kind of opposition, he is probably losing the ball or having to pass backwards. Baek makes decent off-ball runs, looking to receive passes in behind the opposing defence or cutbacks when the ball is in wide areas. Baek is reasonably good at receiving the ball between the opposition midfield and defensive lines. However, he has very little physical strength, which means that if he receives the ball with a defender on his back, he is likely to get knocked off the ball. Going down so easily does mean he wins a decent number of fouls, but it also means it is very easy to halt his progress up the field. Strength is, of course, something you would expect to improve over the next couple of years. Baek’s passing is not much to speak of. He rarely breaks any lines or does anything particularly difficult with his passing. He does attempt a lot of flick passes, but these don’t come off very often. One thing Baek does have going for him is his ball striking. He can hit the ball with a lot of power and swerve. However, whatever he gains from this is significantly limited by his weak dribbling, which makes it difficult for him to achieve separation. As a result, his shot locations are not the best, and his shot volume is fairly low.
The Wyscout data does not credit Baek with very many defensive actions. However, to my eyes, he puts in quite a good shift defensively. True, he may not win very many tackles, but he does do a lot of defensive running and does a decent job of cutting off passing lanes. One thing that does stand out as a weakness, however, is that he commits a lot of fouls while attempting tackles.
In-Woo Baek is a fairly weak player at his current level. But he is very early in his career and does do some positive things. If he can develop more physically and improve his dribbling, I can see him as an effective box-crashing shadow striker. The best-case scenario for him is probably a Europa League-level side.
Target Scouting 