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Other Football

Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma carved out a 1-0 win at Pohang Steelers to earn a championship play-off final date with Jeonbuk Motors.

Amid heavy rain, Pohang attacked the visitors from the beginning and Denilson, Stevica Ristic and Kim Hyung-il all went close.

The best chance of the first quarter of an hour, however, fell to Dzenan Radonicic but the Seongnam striker headed just wide from a good position.

Seongnam goalkeeper Jung Sung-ryeong then produced a great save to deny Noh Byung-joon. Pohang continued to show promise but were shooting from long range and not really troubling Jung.

Molina fired straight at Pohang goalkeeper Shin Yong-hwa when in a good position but the Colombian star made up for it just before the break by curling a left-sided free-kick outside the Pohang wall and into the net, even though Shin got a hand to the ball.

Seongnam will now host Jeonbuk, who finished first in the league standings, on Wednesday in the first leg of the title decider before travelling to Jeonju for Sunday's return match.

"It was a good performance from us and I am very happy," said Seongnam coach Shin tae-yong.

"We knew that Pohang left gaps in their defence when they attacked and we did our best to exploit that. Now we have to prepare for our last home match of the season against Jeonbuk."

Pohang boss Sergio Farias, who takes the Asian Champions League winners to Abu Dhabi next week for the FIFA Club World Cup, was left to rue his team's wastefulness in front of goal which saw their hopes of a treble dashed.

"It is frustrating because we had a number of chances to score," said the Brazilian. "We didn't play badly but were we just unable to put the ball in the net."