The World Cup is back, and for both of these sides this was the night it finally started.

The Czech Republic had waited longest. Two-time runners-up in a vanished era of the game, they had not reached a World Cup since 2006. Twenty years, a play-off just to get here and a generation of players who had only ever watched this tournament on television. South Korea arrived carrying a different kind of weight. This is, in all likelihood, Son Heung-min's last World Cup. A fourth and probably final tournament for the captain, played out in a Guadalajara stadium still half-dressed in the green of Mexico's earlier win and dotted with empty seats.

The game was an odd one to read from the result alone. South Korea were the better team from the first minute to the last. They had more of the ball, made the cleaner chances, and carried the more sustained threat. Yet they walked off at half time to jeers from both ends of the ground, because Son had spurned the sort of chances he normally takes without thinking, and the goal their football deserved simply would not arrive.

The Czechs punished them in the 59th minute, and they did it in the one way South Korea were exposed. Vladimír Coufal hurled a long throw into the box and captain Ladislav Krejčí beat his man at the near post to head it in. Not from open play. From a dead ball. The single route through which this Czech side could realistically do them harm.

The lead lasted eight minutes. Hwang In-beom collected a pass from Lee Kang-in, drifted infield, sold two defenders with a shot feint and clipped a finish inside the post that settled any argument about who the better player on the pitch was. When Tomáš Souček thought he had restored the lead with a header in the 77th, the flag was already up, and rightly so. Three minutes after that, South Korea had the game won. Hwang again, this time as the provider, standing up a cross from the right for substitute Oh Hyeon-gyu to finish.

This week I want to show you how it was built, because the movement that eventually pulled the Czech Republic apart is the kind of rotational play most teams spend years trying to coach and never quite manage.

South Korea (3-4-2-1): Kim Seung-gyu; Kim Min-jae, Lee Han-beom, Lee Gi-hyuk; Seol Young-woo, Hwang In-beom, Paik Seung-ho, Lee Tae-seok; Lee Kang-in, Lee Jae-sung; Son Heung-min (c)

Czech Republic (3-4-2-1): Kovář; Coufal, Holeš, Krejčí (c), Zelený; Souček, Sadílek; Hložek, Šulc; Doudera; Schick

South Korea played with one idea threaded through everything they did on the ball. Get in behind the Czech defence, and do it through movement and timing rather than force.

The principle sounds basic and is anything but easy to stop. They kept trying to match up the back line, occupying every Czech defender at the precise moment a pass in behind became available. Pin every defender to a runner and the defence is left without a clean way out. Hold your position and the ball travels through you. Step towards the ball and a runner is in behind you. There is no third option, and that absence is the entire point.

This shaped the match.

The Czechs kept colliding with the same contradiction. Two jobs that could not be done at the same time. And to be competent it requires communication to be on point in all moments between the defensive unit and the attacking unit.

Their midfield was consistently a second late stepping onto the South Korea player dropping in to receive. They were late because they could not commit to the press without giving up the space behind them. Every time a Czech midfielder leaned towards the ball, a South Korea runner threatened the ground he was about to vacate, and the hesitation pinned him in place.

The back line had the opposite instinct. The moment a South Korea player dropped a yard off the top line, a Czech defender went with him, tight and early. So the structure was being pulled in two directions at once. This is often called Opposite movements. A defence that wanted to chase runners aggressively, sitting behind a midfield that did not dare to jump. The space between those two lines was exactly where South Korea wanted to receive.

The more prominent version of all this was South Korea's wide rotation, a three-man move between the wing-back, the wide forward and the central midfielder.

The wide forward holds high on the top line, occupying the Czech wing-back. The South Korea wing-back then steps inside to receive. As he does, the wide forward spins off his line, and his marker follows him. One Czech defender has now been dragged out of his slot, and the space he leaves behind belongs to the central midfielder arriving into it.

The nearest Czech player will not step to close the new threat, because stepping means opening the space behind him. The rotation does not just produce a free man. It produces a free man standing next to a defender who knows that dealing with him only makes things worse.

Here is the part that lifts it from good to elite level - and why South Korea are an extremely dangerous outfit. The timing.

Watch how South Korea kept occupying the back line while reading the gap between the man receiving the ball and the man marking him. When that gap stretched even slightly, the receiver had a yard, and a yard was all he needed to take a touch, turn, and play forward. Against a back line already pinned man for man, one clean turn was enough to release a runner and manufacture a real chance.

People reduce movement to effort, to covering more ground. But really it is occupying the right men, reading the distance between a receiver and his marker, and arriving at the moment the space opens rather than a second before or after. South Korea did this over and over. The Czech Republic held out for the best part of an hour. Across ninety minutes there was only ever going to be one result.

The result reads as a comeback but the performance does not.

This was a team with a coached, repeatable identity in possession. Match the back line, rotate with intent, and leave the opponent with problems that have no clear answer. The set piece they conceded was close to the only opening the Czech Republic had all night, and for half an hour it looked like it might be enough to mug them. It was not, and the reasons it was not are the same reasons their play kept producing chances. A piece of quality from Hwang In-beom to level it, then the wide rotation and a cross to win it. The exact pattern they had been threatening since kick-off.

For Hong Myung-bo this is close to a perfect opening. Three points, a controlled performance and a group that has cracked open in their favour. South Korea sit level with Mexico at the top of Group A on goal difference, and the co-hosts are next, on 18 June. The Czech Republic go home from Guadalajara with nothing, but little to be ashamed of. They led a better side and made them earn the turnaround, and on a different night Krejčí and Souček bully someone from those set pieces.

If you take one thing into your own coaching, make it this. You rarely break a disciplined block by asking players to run harder. You break it by forcing defenders to choose between two things they cannot both protect. South Korea did exactly that and they did it with a clarity worth analysing.

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The Tactics Academy Newsletter | Issue #006 Lucas | Coach, Analyst, Founder