The 2025 K-League 1 season will serve up an intriguing match-up as newly-promoted FC Anyang are set to take on established giants FC Seoul in what could be South Korea’s newest bitter footballing rivalry. But how did we got to this point?
The root of the Anyang-Seoul animosity came from the predecessors of FC Seoul themselves, LG Cheetahs. Previously known as Lucky-Goldstar FC, the LG Cheetahs moved to Seoul from Chungcheong Province in the late 80s, with team owners LG Group always pushing for the club to be based within the South Korean capital.
Occupying the now-demolished Dongdaemun Stadium, the LG Cheetahs established themselves as one of the top teams in the South Korean top-flight, until the K-League, concerned about the lack of development of football within the provinces, issued a decentralization policy in 1996, meaning that clubs within Seoul had to move out and settle at the provinces to encourage the growth of football within the rural areas.
LG Cheetahs, along with city rivals Ilhwa Chunma and Yukong Elephants, refused to move out of Seoul, thus forcing the city government to issue eviction orders for the trio. The three clubs then reluctantly moved out of Seoul, with Ilhwa Chunma settling in the Seoul satellite city of Seongnam, thus becoming Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma and later Seongnam FC, while Yukong Elephants moved to Bucheon, which was another Seoul satellite city, thus becoming Bucheon SK. They would later went on to move further to the vacation island of Jeju, becoming Jeju United, and early this year, rebranded themselves once again into Jeju SK.
Like their former city rivals, LG Cheetahs opted to move to a satellite city within the Seoul metropolitan area, choosing Anyang as their new base of operations, and rebranded themselves accordingly into Anyang LG Cheetahs. During their time in Anyang, the Anyang LG Cheetahs developed a bitter rivalry with neighbors Suwon Samsung Bluewings, which was not only fueled by the close distance between Anyang and Suwon, but also the business rivalry between LG and Samsung.
The 2002 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, saw the construction of numerous international-standard football stadiums, one of them being the Seoul World Cup Stadium that succeeded the Dongdaemun Stadium in being the city’s premier footballing ground. Following the World Cup, the K-League encouraged teams within the locale of the new stadiums to move in there, to offset any financial losses incurred by maintaining such facilities without weekly income from matches. However, due to the aforementioned decentralization policy, no team would move into the Seoul World Cup Stadium, leaving it as a hulking monolith of sorts that only hosted the occasional international friendlies.
Realizing that maintaining the Seoul World Cup Stadium without a team as its tenant would significantly damage their budget, both the K-League and the Korean Football Association (KFA) sought to have a team settle at the stadium as soon as possible. The two organizations tried to form a Seoul team out of scratch, but realize that said team should shoulder part of the construction fees of the Seoul World Cup Stadium, meaning that it’ll be just as financially unsustainable as leaving the stadium vacant for years.
So a new plan was hatched to lure an existing team to settle at the Seoul World Cup Stadium, as long as they could provide the necessary funds to cover part of the stadium’s costs. And as luck would have it, the Anyang LG Cheetahs, backed by the wealthy LG Group, were seeking for a way to return to Seoul, which they felt was their spiritual home. The financial backing of the LG Group were enough to shoulder the necessary costs, and in early 2004, the Anyang LG Cheetahs announced that they would return to Seoul and rebrand themselves as FC Seoul.
The news did not go down too well with the Anyang LG Cheetahs supporters, who felt that the LG Group were stealing their team away from them. But the die has been cast and the Anyang LG Cheetahs did their relocation and rebrand, much to the anger of their own supporters.
This newfound anger and hate for FC Seoul were left festering for eight years amongst the Anyang LG Cheetahs faithful, until in late 2012 they saw a chance to get back at the team that had abandoned them with the formation of the second-tier K-League 2. Despite opposition from the Anyang city council, an ordinance was passed to form a new professional football club based in Anyang who will play in the K-League 2, and after a public voting, FC Anyang was established in early 2013, becoming one of the foundation clubs of the K-League 2.
Clad in purple, FC Anyang finished 5th in their very first season of existence. The team consistently finished in mid-table throughout their time in the K-League 2, breaking into the top half and promotion places occasionally. However, at the end of the 2024 campaign, FC Anyang stormed their way to the K-League 2 title, edging out runners-up Chungnam Asan by three points to claim their spot in the K-League 1 for the first time in their history.
Despite being a relatively new club, FC Anyang retained their animosity towards Suwon Samsung Bluewings, a leftover from the Anyang LG Cheetahs period, which came to a head in the 2024 season after the Bluewings’ relegation from the top-flight. However, the FC Anyang supporters reserved their biggest hatred towards one club and one club only – FC Seoul.
Both FC Anyang and FC Seoul had met in a competitive match only once – in the round of 32 of the 2017 Korean FA Cup. FC Seoul won the match 2-0, however the atmosphere was tense and livid, with FC Anyang lighting up flares in defiance towards the presence of their arch-nemesis.
FC Anyang’s promotion to the 2025 K-League 1 provided the opportunity for them to take on FC Seoul on a regular basis, with the first-ever league match between the two enemies being set to be played on February 22nd at the Seoul World Cup Stadium.
While not as played as frequently as the more well-known Super Match (FC Seoul vs Suwon Samsung Bluewings) or the East Coast Derby (Ulsan HD vs Pohang Steelers), the intertwining history between FC Seoul and FC Anyang meant that matches between the two could provide some of the fiercest rivalries in South Korean football.