Kang In Lee debuts at home as Manchester City spoils Atlético’s Seoul night

Kang In Lee could hardly have asked for a more cinematic setting for his Atlético Madrid debut: a packed Seoul World Cup Stadium, a home-country audience, a new No. 7 shirt and Manchester City on the other side. The result was the one part that refused to follow the script.

Manchester City won 3-1 after scoring three times in the second half, but the night had already produced several stories before the comeback began.

Atlético’s first big moment came from 16-year-old Jorge Domínguez. He scored in the 43rd minute to send Diego Simeone’s team into halftime with a 1-0 lead. In a match filled with international names, a teenager became the first scorer.

Then the tone changed quickly. Omar Marmoush tied the game in the 57th minute after Antoine Semenyo set him up. Two minutes later, Semenyo found him again and Marmoush made it 2-1. Two assists, two finishes and an entire match flipped before the crowd had much time to process it.

Semenyo’s creativity was not a one-night surprise. Manchester City said he finished the three-game Hong Kong and South Korea tour with four assists. For a club heading straight toward competitive football, that is the kind of preseason stat that actually carries some interest: it suggests repeated chance creation rather than a single viral highlight.

But Seoul’s emotional center was always going to be Kang. Atlético recently signed the South Korea international from Paris Saint-Germain through June 2031 and gave him the No. 7 shirt. Instead of waiting for a debut in Madrid, he got his first minutes in red and white in his own country.

Kang entered in the second half and nearly made the moment even bigger by threatening an equalizer. He did not score, and Simeone later stressed that he still needs time to learn Atlético’s system. That is probably the healthiest way to handle a debut that came with far more attention than a normal preseason substitution.

The spectacle around the match made that attention even larger. Manchester City’s official report said K-pop artist San performed before kickoff and Rescene performed at halftime. That meant the audience was getting a hybrid event: European club soccer at the center, Korean pop culture around it and a major Korean football star stepping into a new club identity.

The attendance was 50,078, another reminder that preseason soccer can become a stadium-scale entertainment product when the right teams and local connection line up.

City and Atlético already knew that Seoul could deliver that kind of crowd. They met at the same stadium in 2023, when Atlético won 2-1 and City listed the attendance at 64,165. Three years later, the rematch brought a different winner and an extra layer of local celebrity through Kang.

The game itself stayed close until the final minute. Atlético was only one goal down for most of the second half, giving Kang and the other substitutes time to chase an equalizer. Rayan Aït-Nouri ended that possibility with City’s third goal in the 90th minute.

For City, the win was a useful ending to the Asia Tour. Enzo Maresca’s team now moves toward the Community Shield against Arsenal in Cardiff. Maresca treated Atlético as the last major rehearsal and emphasized after the match that the preseason stage is over.

That makes Marmoush’s timing notable. A two-goal performance in a friendly does not guarantee a strong competitive season, but a striker entering a trophy match with fresh evidence of sharp finishing is exactly what a coach wants.

Atlético has more time to think in terms of integration. Domínguez gave Simeone a reason to keep watching a player who is still only 16. Kang gave the club a first public glimpse of how its new signing looks in red and white. Simeone praised the youngster and asked for patience with the newcomer, two messages that point in the same direction: development cannot be rushed just because the spotlight is bright.

And the spotlight in Seoul was extremely bright. This was not a quiet preseason game played in front of a half-empty ground. It had more than 50,000 spectators, pop performances, global clubs and one of South Korea’s best-known players making a debut.

That is why the result and the event can be remembered differently. City will remember a comeback, a Marmoush brace and two more Semenyo assists. Atlético will remember the frustration of losing after leading, but also Domínguez’s goal and Kang’s first appearance.

South Korean fans got both narratives at once: the home star they came to welcome, and the ruthless two-minute City response that decided the game.

For a friendly, that is a lot of plot.