Where is “Player 9” Now? The Sexy Soccer Player Who Had K-Pop Fans Simping Hard

In Fall 2022, the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 took place, gathering football teams from around the world.

The event created many viral moments — from all aspects of BTS Jungkook‘s legendary performance at the event’s opening ceremony, and his activities while in the country…

…to a past clip of two rival players going viral for their “K-Drama worthy” moment.

Enemies To Lovers IRL: Soccer Players Maor Levi And Nodar Kavtaradze Go Viral For “BL Drama” Moment

After Jungkook snapped a photo with Korea’s team, another player quickly gained attention for his visuals, becoming a hot topic worldwide as fans praised his looks.

Cho Gue Sung, or “Player 9” as he was known, is a 98-liner who began playing football professionally in 2019. Korea’s match against Uraguay was his World Cup debut, and also the moment his popularity rose immensely.

Cho Gue Sung | Yonhap | ESPN | @whrbtjd/Instagram

He went viral for many moments including one with Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

Cho Gue Sung (left) and Cristiano Ronaldo (right).

In addition to growing his social media platform — before the games he had around 3000 and grew to 300,000 in less than 24-hours — he was given the true “idol” treatment, going viral for is unedited visuals in airport preview photos when the team returned to Korean.

Since then, the football player seems to have embraced his status as a visual, appearing on the covers of Vogue Korea and ElleMan. He also appeared on the variety show I Live Alone where he further endeared himself to audiences watching.

Cho is still playing football for the Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors team, despite getting trade bids from teams in Ireland, Germany and the United States.

And while he did attract some mixed reactions for his questionable styling when he appeared with the national soccer team for their match against Colombia in March…

…but the visual player has continually attracted attention for his looks as the season progresses, gaining over seven million views and one million likes on a photo set from the team’s recent rainy match.

Guesung’s photos after the match went viral on Tiktok,the videot got 4.1 Million views and 1 Million likes in one day.#조규성 #choguesung pic.twitter.com/2T5qSd7GdU

— (@choguesungfc) May 31, 2023

While Cho is not super active on Instagram, you can keep up with his activities there, like his partnership with UNICEF Korea. He will also be representing Korea in matches against Peru and Salvador in mid-June, with the former of the two sold out already!

6월 A매치 페루전 티켓 전석매진!
축구팬 여러분의 성원에 감사드립니다

하나은행 초청 축구국가대표팀 친선경기
v#페루 06.16(금) 20:00 부산아시아드주경기장#대한민국 #축구국가대표팀 #6월 #친선경기 #다시카타르 #아시아_정상을_향해 pic.twitter.com/Lpeu4efZjH

— theKFA (@theKFA) June 6, 2023