2025 K League 2 Season Preview
The K League United Podcast finally turns its attentions to the second tier this week as K League 2 gets underway on Saturday.
Matthew Binns and Andrew Farrell are on the podcast this week, looking over the state of K League 2 ahead of the 2025 campaign.
They wont' be alone though, as our writers join them to give their views on teams in a division that is bigger than ever!Mike Brandon, Michael Redmond, Diogo Valente, Luke Evans and Paul Neat all make appearances to help cover the expanded team list.
After all that, there's time to discuss title predictions as well as who else we think may scrape a promotion before then continuing the conversation over onPatreon to go through the K League 1 action at the weekend.
There's also the announcement of our latest kit giveaway. In celebration of 10 years of K League United, we look to give away a match-worn home shirt fromour website's first interviewee, FC Anyang's Austin Berry. To stand a chance of winning this 2015 Anyang kit, simply follow us and reshare the related social media post of this podcast, or share this page with @KLeagueUnited tagged, for your chance to enter the draw with the prize set to be drawn in March.
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