One of the advantages of competing on home soil is having the support of partisan fans in the stands. The biggest of athletes thrive in the most pressure-packed moments, and they are able to feed off the energy of the spectators, rather than wilt under the burden of expectations.

South Korean men's football captain Kim Young-gwon, on the other hand, had difficulty playing before a massive crowd Thursday at Seoul World Cup Stadium in the World Cup qualifier against Iran. And he had some practical reasons.

Kim and his teammates couldn't really hear each other.

The match ended in a scoreless draw, with neither side able to generate dangerous opportunities. Kim played the full match as one of the team's center backs.

When asked by reporters afterward where South Korea had to improve, Kim cited the importance of communication between players during the game.
 

And with 63,124 fans at the 66,704-seat stadium -- the vast majority being South Koreans -- screaming nearly every time South Koreans touched the ball, talking to each other wasn't easy, Kim said.

"It was quite difficult to communicate with the guys because it was noisy out there," Kim said. "We could yell all we wanted and still couldn't hear each other well. We prepared ourselves for a situation like this, but it was still frustrating that I couldn't hear the guys."

At the club level, Kim plies his trade with Chinese giants Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao, whose home, Tianhe Stadium, has a capacity of 58,500. Last year, they led the Chinese Super League with an average home attendance of 44,883 per match.

To be fair, it was indeed quite raucous at Seoul World Cup Stadium. This was the ninth-largest crowd gathered at the venue, which hosted 2002 FIFA World Cup matches.

On the other hand, rare is the athlete who openly complains about noise from the home crowd. More often than not, athletes thank their fans for packing the stadium and spurring them on to victories and for rattling their opponents with loud cheering.

The Korea Football Association even moved the kickoff time from 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., so that more people could come to the stadium after work on a Thursday -- this especially in a country notorious for long working hours.

And the KFA met its target of drawing at least 60,000 fans. It hoped the players could enjoy having such support, but none other than the captain himself said it was actually too loud.

Kim said when South Korea travel to Tashkent to face Uzbekistan for the final qualifier next Tuesday, he could find himself in a similarly noisy setting.

"We have to be prepared in a way that we'd be able to tell what we're thinking just by looking each other in the eye," Kim said. "The defense corps has to do a better job of communicating. That's the most important thing."

Kim faced much backlash in cyberspace for his words, and his name remained among the most searched items on South Korean portals well into the wee hours of Friday morning.

Through a national team official, Kim issued an apology for his slip of the tongue.

"I'd like to apologize to all the fans who came out to cheer us on," Kim said. "I didn't mean to say those things. There were so many things going through my head, and I made a mistake. I deeply regret that."

The team official said Kim only belatedly recognized what he'd said, and he never intended to criticize the home fans.

Kim is expected to issue another apology before he and the rest of the national team depart for Uzbekistan later Friday. (Yonhap)