SPURS SENSATION SON LANDS BUMPER NEW DEAL
SON HEUNG-MIN is set for a second pay-rise in a year as reward for his sensational season at Tottenham. The South Korea forward signed a five-year contract in July, but Spurs will offer him a new deal this summer to cement his position as
one of Mauricio Pochettino’s key men. Son’s current contract is worth around £110,000 a
week, but the 26-year-old can expect new terms to move him closer to Dele Alli, whose deal is worth up to £150,000 a week. Since October, Son has scored 16 goals in 23 games in all competitions for Spurs. In a further boost for the club, Harry Kane is set to return to full training next week — two weeks ahead of schedule — after his ankle injury, and could line up to face Burnley a week tomorrow.
There have been limits to Son heungmin’s attempts to acclimatise to a new life 5,000 miles from home. The South Korean gave short shrift, for example, to the notion that he might enjoy playing golf, as British footballers are often inclined to do. ‘You hit the ball as far as you can and then you search for it. That’s boring,’ he said a few years back. ‘I’d rather stay at home, relax and listen to music.’
But SuperSONic, as the 26-year- old was depicted in a recent Spurs in-house video, is fostering an improbable air of mutual fascination between South Korea and north London, which the sublimity of his performance against Borussia Dortmund took to new levels on Wednesday night.
The volume of work Son puts in is at times overlooked, though his significance as Tottenham’s focal point in the absence of harry Kane and Dele Alli these last weeks has been unmistakable.
Tottenham have won all 13 games in which Son has scored this season and have found him to be indefatigable. In his first three games back after returning from South Korea’s Asian Cup campaign, Son scored an 80thminute equaliser against Watford, an 83rd-minute winner against Newcastle and a stoppage-time third goal which ended Leicester’s hopes of a comeback.
All of that before his crucial opener against Dortmund. ‘I’ve played with some great players and against some great players, and Sonny is special,’ Jan Vertonghen said yesterday. ‘ You underestimate that because of the work he puts in, then his quality, outstanding left foot, right foot. he can play striker, left wing, right wing, he can play as a 10.’
his compatriots were watching. The five most searched stories on the huge South Korean portal Naver after the game were all about Tottenham or the man universally known as ‘Sonny’.
No fewer than 12 full-time South Korean journalists are following Son around at Spurs and the Seoul-based media needs every one of them. The build-up to last February’s North London derby on one of the South Korean sports networks was preceded by a 30-minute documentary just about him. When the game began, Tottenham’s badge was replaced by a picture of Son’s head on the scoreline graphic.
Spurs have come up with some creative output of their own. Their video of Son’s searing goal against Chelsea, after he had sliced through the opposition’s midfield in November, was given the full video game treatment,
a la Sonic the hedgehog. Other creations are more homespun — like the hello Kitty style ‘Sonny’ hats being worn around Wembley. The fanatical following has been building through his four years at the club, which began so inauspiciously that Mauricio Pochettino had to talk him out of leaving in 2016.
Within a year, the club had appointed a new licensing agent in South east Asia after finding an immediate 30 per cent growth in their South Korean fan base.
The Korean tyre-maker Kumo is now one of the club’s main financial partners.
When Son and three team-mates peeled off from the Spurs squad touring hong Kong to pay a brief visit to Seoul in May 2017, the Incheon International Airport was deluged with 500 fans.
‘It was like Beatlemania,’ says one witness. There was a similar effect when Spurs took Son to Koreatown, Los Angeles, last summer. ‘Pandemonium,’ says the same source. It helps that he has demonstrated a quality of spoken english way beyond anything South Korea’s Premier League trailblazer Park Ji- sung — one of Son’s heroes — could offer at Manchester United.
But the No 7 won’t be going native any time soon. When the magazine FourFourTwo suggested his excellent language skills at hamburg, his first european club, perhaps made him feel half- German, half-Korean, he gave the notion short shrift.
‘Oh no, no. I’m Korean through and through. When I’m not training or playing, you can find me at home, watching Korean films,’ he replied. he revealed in the same interview that he made a point of learning German swearwords before he left Korea, because ‘you can’t have people calling you names while you just look at them, smiling politely’.
evidence, if any were needed, that beneath the self- effacing exterior there resides steel.
Tottenham staff speak of him with unstinting affection. his different handshake for each team-mate is legendary and he has held Korean barbecues for them, bringing in food from a local Korean restaurant to the modest apartment he shares with his parents.
his profile in South Korea is monumental, propelling him to the Forbes Asia rich List’s ‘30 under 30’ list, among others.
The forward doesn’t go in hugely for social media, as many in his celebrity bracket do. Just 66 Instagram posts — delivering him a following of 1.91m — and seemingly no presence on Twitter.
But his presence at Spurs has been immense this season, winning him fans from north London to Korea and everywhere in between.