WK League News

Ahn Taehwa, manager at Changnyeong WFC from 2023 to 2025, has rejoined the coaching staff at Seoul City Amazones. Ahn previously coached at the club before taking on the managerial role at Changnyeong, and her working relationship with Seoul manager Yoo Youngsil goes back years.

When Yoo was in charge of the U-18 academy side at Seoul’s Dongsan I.C.T. High School, Ahn was the team’s coach. They were the only all-female coaching staff in the country at the time. Having won three domestic titles with the team in 2014, Yoo left to join Seoul City’s senior side as a coach, and Ahn was appointed to replace her as manager at Dongsan. She led the team for five years, making her a familiar figure to many current WK League players who played for (or against) Dongsan during their youth careers. Throughout Ahn’s time as manager, Dongsan maintained their status as one of Korea’s top U-18 sides, and in 2019 they lifted the trophy at the Queen’s Cup.

While working at Dongsan, Ahn also worked with some of South Korea’s national youth squads. In 2019, Yoo Youngsil managed the country’s side for the Summer Universiade, and the duo were reunited as Ahn joined the coaching team for the tournament. When Yoo returned to Seoul City after four years managing the women’s football academy at Daeduk University, Ahn joined her again, and remained with the club for three years, until her 2023 appointment as manager of a struggling Changnyeong WFC.

Changnyeong WFC joined the WK League in 2018 as a newly-established club in a remote countryside location, and finished dead last in three of its first five seasons. Ahn took on a team that had lost half its squad during the winter transfer window, and she had to work hard to recruit new players and improve the team’s standings on a very limited budget. After another bottom-of-the-table finish for Changnyeong in her first year as manager, Ahn admitted that it had been tough to adapt to the role despite her experience coaching in the league, but vowed to make the club a place where young players could gain experience and flourish in the long term.

Results did not improve for Changnyeong. Limited finances and the ever-present possibility that the club could cease to exist at any moment made recruitment an unenviable task. Reports that players wept after being drafted to the club didn’t do Changnyeong’s image any favours, and with only four wins in the last two WK League seasons, supporters started to lose patience with manager Ahn. The confirmation late last year of news that Changnyeong WFC would cease to exist, and that what remained of it would be relocated, reconstructed, and rebranded as Gangjin Swans WFC, heralded the end of Ahn Taehwa’s WK League managerial debut.

Now, Ahn is back at Seoul, and back working with Yoo Youngsil. Alongside them is Yoo Young-a, the former Seoul and South Korea striker who transitioned into coaching after retiring from her playing career in 2024. Rounding out the coaching team is goalkeeping coach Yoon Sung-hwi. The Amazones had a fantastic season in 2025, not only breaking into the top half of the table alongside teams with much better finances, but chasing Hwacheon KSPO for the number one spot right up until the end of the season and even causing some last-minute drama in both legs of the championship final. As Gyeongju, Suwon, and Incheon — teams that fell short of their targets in 2025 — prepare to come back with a vengeance in 2026, it will be tough for Seoul to deliver a repeat of last year. Then again, nobody saw it coming last year either…