Korean Air head coach Tommy Tilikainen and OK Financial Group head coach Masashi Ogino will meet for the first time in the Korean Professional Volleyball V League Men’s regular season.

Both coaches said they “don’t care,” but it’s a unique moment in the history of the men’s V-League when two foreign coaches meet as foes in the same game.

Korean Air and OK Financial Group will play the final match of the first round of the Dodram 2023-2024 V-League Men’s Division at Gyeyang Gymnasium in Incheon on July 7.

Tilikainen is the second foreign head coach in the history of the V-League Men’s Division and Ogino is the third.

They first met in the Group A qualifiers of the Gumi Professional Volleyball Cup in August, with Tilikainen’s Korean Air winning in straight sets, 3-2.

This will be the first time the two foreign love birds have met in a men’s regular season V-League match.

On the women’s side, the first foreign managerial clash took place on October 22 when Heungkuk Life (Marcello Abondanza) played Pepper Savings Bank (Joe Trinzi).

“I’ve been in Korea for six months now, and Coach Tilikainen has a lot of experience in Korea (winning back-to-back titles in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons),” said OK Financial Group head coach Ogino before the game. There are things I can learn from him.”

Tilikainen coached the Nagoya Wolfdogs in Nippon Professional Volleyball from the 2017-2018 season to the 2020-2021 season. However, there was no interaction between the two at the time.

“When Coach Tilikainen was in Japan, I was in the management team of a Japanese professional team, not as a coach, so I saw him from a distance,” Ogino said.

“Since Coach Ogino arrived, everything has changed in OK Financial Group’s offense, defense, serving, and blocking. It’s interesting to watch,” he said, adding, “These changes come naturally with a change of head coach. The nationality of the coach doesn’t matter. I don’t think there’s anything special about today’s match either,” he said. 먹튀검증