Ryu Joong-il, the new manager of the Samsung Lions in the Korea Baseball Organization, set his goal high for his first season as a bench boss.

“The goal is to win the Korean Series,” Ryu said at a press conference Wednesday here, about 330 kilometers southeast of Seoul. It was Ryu’s his first public appearance since being named the manager last week.

“I want to play an entertaining, aggressive brand of baseball and bring back our old fans who have stopped coming to ball games,” Ryu added.

Ryu, a former All-Star shortstop who played his entire 13-year playing career with Samsung, became the Lions’ manager in a surprise reshuffle last week.

The team announced at the time that former manager Sun Dong-yol stepped down to allow the team to make changes ahead of the new season, amid speculation that he had actually been handed a pink slip by the team’s new-look front office. 

(Yonhap News)