Yid-ol
Just-outside Edinburgh
- Jan 16, 2006
- 31,183
- 19,429
Player Watch Player Watch: Son Heung-min
- Thread starter Dharmabum
- Start date
TheWook
Here
- Jan 8, 2021
- 1,020
- 4,111
yido_number1
He'll always be magic
- Jun 8, 2004
- 8,724
- 16,951
That would explain so much. That would effect his long range striking and change of direction a lot.
Let's hope he's injury free and firing again this year.
VoteMe4Prez
Well-Known Member
- Oct 6, 2013
- 2,739
- 6,885
Bloody hell, can the guy not just get some rest?
Locotoro
Prince of Zamunda
- Sep 2, 2004
- 9,412
- 14,103
To be fair they are trying to prep for the Asian Cup Finals
HarryTed14
Well-Known Member
- May 6, 2018
- 117
- 407
The tweet was from the 13th June and the match was the 16th June 
He will be having a rest now!
He will be having a rest now!
TheWook
Here
- Jan 8, 2021
- 1,020
- 4,111
Not much rest from the op to the match though, should have just let him recover properly.The tweet was from the 13th June and the match was the 16th June
He will be having a rest now!
mil1lion
This is the place to be
- May 7, 2004
- 42,605
- 78,306
All this time we thought it was the Calvin Kleins restricting him
Marty
Audere est farce
- Mar 10, 2005
- 40,200
- 64,026
This playing through injury malarkey he was doing last season seems even more bizarre to me the more I read about it. We have his own words saying it was a hellish experience and nobody thought that maybe a month or two out would be better for him than playing through it? It doesn't reflect well on either himself, Conte or the medical staff IMO. One of the three had to put their foot down and let him rest.
Though the physical pain of last season has thankfully gone, the memories of it are still enough to make Son Heung-min wince.
“I was in pain every single moment, literally,” Son says, looking back on a 2022-23 campaign that preceded him having a sports hernia operation to cure an issue that bothered him for the duration of a hugely disappointing year.
“It sounds weird but every turn, running, stopping, passing, kicking — it affected everything. It was strange because in normal life, doing no exercise, it felt fine, so I went on the pitch excited because I didn’t have pain when I was walking. (But) As soon as I was on the pitch for a warm-up I would be frustrated because the pain is there, every action, turning, passing, kicking… finally I made the decision at the end of the season to have the surgery and I think it’s the best decision I ever made.”
Hearing Son explain just how much he was hampered last season helps us understand how he could go from jointly winning the 2021-22 Golden Boot with 23 goals to scoring just four by mid-February this year and even having his place in the Spurs team come under threat.
He ended the campaign with 10 Premier League goals from 36 appearances, his least since the four he scored in his 2015-16 debut season in it — after which he almost left the north London club. Though interestingly, his underlying expected goals (xG) figure was similar to previous campaigns — he just stopped overperforming to the ridiculous extent we had come to expect.
The next graphic underlines how Son has had purple patches where he massively overperforms in front of goal compared to the quality of chances (indicated by the blue areas) across a 900-minute rolling average — unprecedentedly so.
He insists he’s in a very different place now, which is hugely exciting for Spurs — who, like Son, are fresh from a hugely disappointing 2022-23 that saw them go through three managers on the way to finishing eighth, missing out on any European football for the coming campaign.
“It was a mess last season,” Son says. “As players, young and old, we should all take a big responsibility.”
It’s hard to disagree with that “mess” description, but a fully-fit Son could have a transformative effect on their 2023-24 fortunes.
This is the story of how the South Korean went from “just closing my eyes praying” on the final day of last season as he tried to cope with the excruciating pain to now feeling like “a new man” and being “ready to rock and roll”.
And what a fit Son playing under new coach Ange Postecoglou might look like.
Son has the air of someone relieved to have been given a second chance.
Expectations were so high this time last year, when he was basking in his homecoming during Tottenham’s pre-season tour of South Korea. That almost made the disappointment of what followed more acute, which in turn means the relief Son feels at being pain-free now is palpable.
“I really didn’t want it to come out officially that I had an operation but I feel good, feel fresh. I feel (like) a new man,” he says, speaking while on the club’s current pre-season tour, which has taken them to Singapore after stops in Australia and Thailand.
Son arrived in Australia early to try to get himself back up to speed after playing in a home friendly for his country against El Salvador on June 20.
He wasn’t ready to feature against West Ham in Perth last week, but was due to start the game against Leicester City in Bangkok on Sunday that got abandoned before kick-off because torrential rain led to a waterlogged pitch. He had looked sharp in an open training session the previous evening.
“It was really tough moments,” Son, who turned 31 two weeks ago, says of last season. “I’m the type who is always hiding the pain. Last season, (I spent) the whole season in pain. It was incredible. I can’t even think about the pain, you know. Now I feel really good, fresh. The physios are still working on it, because it has only been a week to 10 days (training), so I’m looking forward to being in good shape.
“I’m ready to rock and roll.”
Hearing Son outline just how much the condition was hurting him, one wonders why he waited until the end of the season to have the operation.
“Probably people are thinking why didn’t I do the surgery as early as possible, but for me it felt like for the club during the season every single moment felt like a difficult moment,” he says. “I didn’t want to let the people down. I didn’t want to let the players and the staff down because that means a lot to me. And then the fans supporting me, I take the responsibility whether I played good or bad, with pain or not.
“One thing was clear, I didn’t want people to be let down by just going away in a tough moment because of the pain.”
Son’s words here are a sobering reminder of the relentlessness of the football schedule — especially in a season like the last one that uniquely had a World Cup plonked in the middle of it. One can understand why Son felt there was never a good time to take a few weeks off. Even though he was getting hammered for his performances.
“I’m not going to say anything because I took this decision and had to take the responsibility,” he says of how hard it was to take all the criticism he was getting knowing there were pretty sizable mitigating circumstances. “But the Premier League is one of the toughest leagues in the world. Even if you’re 100 per cent fit it’s tough. If you can perform only 60 or 70 per cent, yeah it’s going to be a killer.
“I took the decision and I take all the blame. One thing that was just clear in these tough moments (was) I didn’t want the players and the fans to be let down, so I was holding in my pain and I suffered but it was all my decision.
“Everybody thinks in a different way. Some people in pain want to let people know. I’m totally different. I didn’t want people to know. We are professional footballers — everyone has pain, everyone takes painkillers before the game because you are playing competitive sport and there is pain.
“I don’t know how many people go into games through the season feeling like, ‘Oh, wow, I feel 100 per cent fit without pain’. I think it’s maybe one or two games a season. Maybe. But you accept it because you love the sport and you have people behind you, supporting you. For me, it’s not important if people know or not. You take the decision and you have to perform.”
The build-up of the pain reached a crescendo on the final day of the season away at Leeds United.
“To be honest, the last game of the season was really painful,” Son says. “I was really close to giving up against Leeds. But when I looked at the staff, I couldn’t say, ‘There’s one more game and I’m going to have surgery now’. I was just closing my eyes, praying, ‘Please, let’s win this game’.” (Spurs did take the three points, winning 4-1 with Son playing for 76 minutes, but missed out on a Europa Conference League place because Aston Villa also beat Brighton 2-1 that day.)
It feels like a distant memory but earlier last season, on the eve of the World Cup break in mid-November, Son also had to have surgery — on a fractured eye socket picked up in a Champions League away win at Marseille. He then played every minute of South Korea’s four games in the tournament wearing a protective face mask.
The injury Son picked up at Marseille meant he had to wear a mask at the World Cup (Photo: Getty)
“Look, this is football,” he says. “I’m still here and fully fit. Nobody is thinking about these injuries any more.”
Son’s stoicism is obvious, so how did it feel when Spurs’ then-head coach Antonio Conte blasted the players for being “selfish” in his final press conference at Southampton in March? “Ummm… it is a bit painful but I think people see it in different ways,” he says diplomatically. “I don’t think he meant it. He was just in an aggressive way, an emotional way after the game.” (Tottenham had blown a late 3-1 lead to draw 3-3 with the club who eventually finished bottom of the Premier League.)
Son was frustrated at times last season by the role he was asked to play under Conte, but has kind words for the Italian.
“I think we all know… I’m grateful to him,” he says of Conte. “I can’t say anything bad about him because I take the blame. I should have done much, much better. Two years ago I won the Golden Boot and the expectation was high. The team needed me in a different way in the difficult moments and, for any reasons, pain or whatever, I couldn’t perform, so I still feel sorry for him.
“I was good with him. The season before was fantastic. I won the Golden Boot with him. I can’t say anything bad about him. I’m grateful to have worked with him. Obviously, the end was not ideal, not what we wanted, but I’m grateful and I’ve learned lots of things about football and being a human being, and about being more passionate.”
It’s striking to hear how much responsibility Son takes for what happened at Tottenham last season — just as his team-mate Cristian Romero did on Monday.
Both players appear desperate to make amends and both believe Postecoglou is the man to oversee fundamental changes in how the team play and their results.
Postecoglou sees the game in a very different way to Conte.
Wingers are hugely important in his system, and where Son was asked to do a lot of tracking back under his predecessor, Postecoglou will ask him to defend from the front, stay wide when Spurs have the ball and attack the box when the opposite winger has it.
Seasoned Postecoglou watchers say that plan should suit the Korean very well.
“This is how I used to play: on the touchline, one-v-one with the full-backs and creating problems for the defensive line,” Son says. “When I stay wide, we will have more space inside and (players) running into the space. Obviously, we didn’t talk about any individual roles but even when I wasn’t playing against West Ham I could literally see what my role will be. It’s simple. Everyone in his position knows now what to do and how to manage their game.”
Son talking about how he likes to stay close to the touchline is interesting, as back home in South Korea there was a lot of frustration last season at him being asked to often move inside to central midfield and open the space up for left wing-back Ivan Perisic to attack down that flank. This didn’t help the effectiveness of Son or the team, and it was felt that Conte needed to do more to recognise this system wasn’t working, rather than continue to do the same thing and hope something would click for Son and the team — which it never did.
Son couldn’t get into dangerous areas as frequently as he would have liked, and ended up taking his shots on average a couple of yards further out than he had in that Golden Boot season.
He was still getting a similar number of attempts away, but his expected goals (xG) per shot figure fell from 0.19 in 2021-22 to 0.12. Linked to that, he was averaging 3.3 touches in the opposition penalty area per 90 minutes — his lowest in five seasons and almost half the 6.1 he managed in 2017-18.
How will things be different this season? Well, for a start, much of the Postecoglou system is geared towards getting the ball to the wide players. The full-backs invert when his teams are building possession, which will be aimed at giving Tottenham more control in the middle of the pitch and then opening up the space and passing lanes to get the ball to Son and Dejan Kulusevski on the other side.
Postecoglou demands that his wingers stay high and wide to stretch the play, create overloads with the full-back and one of the No 8s, take on the opposition full-back and attack the penalty area, and go for the space directly in front of goal when the winger on the other side of the pitch has the ball.
A typical Celtic goal under Postecoglou over the past two seasons had one of the No 8s or full-backs sliding the ball through for one winger to beat his man and then cross for the other (or Kyogo Furuhashi, the centre-forward) to score.
“Son will be amazing under Ange,” predicts Adam Peacock, an Australian writer for Code Sports and a long-term Postecoglou follower.
“Likewise Kulusevski. They’re attacking players who love playing forward and going forward. You saw them under Conte and they were good on the break but imagine telling those guys to think about where they need to be defensively — it’s not exactly getting the best out of them. They should be liberated under Ange.”
It certainly seems that way, and Postecoglou appears particularly enthused by the prospect of working with the Korean.
“I know Sonny really well, I’ve known him for a long time,” Postecoglou said on Tuesday. “He’s an outstanding player. Especially the way I like teams to play with wingers who are a goal threat, he’s elite.
“He’s as good as anyone because he has that ability to play wide and play one on one. The fact that he scores goals is just priceless.”
The idea of Spurs going back on the front foot certainly appeals to Son.
“I’m really excited to be playing attacking football because we have quality players and can score many goals and win games,” he says.
Wingers in general hold a special place in Postecoglou’s heart. “I love a winger, so it’d have to be Jimmy Johnstone, mate,” he said in March, when asked which former Celtic players would best suit his style.
Bissouma says Postecoglou is giving Spurs confidence after frustrating season
Not that this means he goes easy on them — the feeling at Celtic was that the wingers had to be the team’s hardest-working players. It’s a good job Son is feeling so physically sharp now, because he will be asked to get through a huge amount of work.
In Postecoglou’s only game in charge so far, that Australian friendly against West Ham, Manor Solomon got a lot of joy out on the left as Tottenham’s passing patterns and movement often left him one-v-one with the opposition full-back. Spurs lost 3-2 but had 32 shots to West Ham’s seven.
“You could probably see against West Ham, it’s still a lot to improve and to change in the way we play but we want to have the ball, we want to be attacking more, play in their half, which I think is really important for us as a team and a club,” Son says. “The club has a style of playing football. You could see against West Ham it has been changed from last season.
Son at a sustainability upcycling event with local children in Bangkok (Photo: Tottenham Hotspur)
“You want to play in their half of the pitch, which is always good as a way to score goals — it’s a shorter distance than if you have 60, 70 metres in front of you. Managers are all different in the way they want to play but you have to accept what they want.”
Also looking ahead to 2023-24 on a personal level, Son says: “I just want to show that last season was not the Sonny we all know. The six seasons in a row, performing in a consistent way, wasn’t lucky. It was hard work. Last season, obviously, wasn’t the best but I think I learned most at 30 years old. This was the year I learned most. I can’t say it was a fantastic season but in terms of mentality, it was just as good as two seasons ago because I could see I could bring it back from where I started. This season, I just want to show the Sonny we all know is still there.”
Smashed hotels, diplomatic rows, missing players: When pre-season tours go wrong
As for the team, he adds: “When you’re wearing this shirt you should know you’re playing for Tottenham, playing in the Premier League, and it is not enough to give 99 per cent. If we think like this and stick together like a family, we can go back up the mountain and with no mess. This is very very important for us as a club.”
After the year just gone, no mess and no pain in the coming season would be a blessed relief for Son.
Son Heung-min was speaking at a sustainability upcycling event with local children from Second Chance Bangkok. Tottenham players helped the kids repurpose some of last season’s shirts into new school bags.
“I was in pain every single moment, literally,” Son says, looking back on a 2022-23 campaign that preceded him having a sports hernia operation to cure an issue that bothered him for the duration of a hugely disappointing year.
“It sounds weird but every turn, running, stopping, passing, kicking — it affected everything. It was strange because in normal life, doing no exercise, it felt fine, so I went on the pitch excited because I didn’t have pain when I was walking. (But) As soon as I was on the pitch for a warm-up I would be frustrated because the pain is there, every action, turning, passing, kicking… finally I made the decision at the end of the season to have the surgery and I think it’s the best decision I ever made.”
Hearing Son explain just how much he was hampered last season helps us understand how he could go from jointly winning the 2021-22 Golden Boot with 23 goals to scoring just four by mid-February this year and even having his place in the Spurs team come under threat.
He ended the campaign with 10 Premier League goals from 36 appearances, his least since the four he scored in his 2015-16 debut season in it — after which he almost left the north London club. Though interestingly, his underlying expected goals (xG) figure was similar to previous campaigns — he just stopped overperforming to the ridiculous extent we had come to expect.
The next graphic underlines how Son has had purple patches where he massively overperforms in front of goal compared to the quality of chances (indicated by the blue areas) across a 900-minute rolling average — unprecedentedly so.
He insists he’s in a very different place now, which is hugely exciting for Spurs — who, like Son, are fresh from a hugely disappointing 2022-23 that saw them go through three managers on the way to finishing eighth, missing out on any European football for the coming campaign.
“It was a mess last season,” Son says. “As players, young and old, we should all take a big responsibility.”
It’s hard to disagree with that “mess” description, but a fully-fit Son could have a transformative effect on their 2023-24 fortunes.
This is the story of how the South Korean went from “just closing my eyes praying” on the final day of last season as he tried to cope with the excruciating pain to now feeling like “a new man” and being “ready to rock and roll”.
And what a fit Son playing under new coach Ange Postecoglou might look like.
Son has the air of someone relieved to have been given a second chance.
Expectations were so high this time last year, when he was basking in his homecoming during Tottenham’s pre-season tour of South Korea. That almost made the disappointment of what followed more acute, which in turn means the relief Son feels at being pain-free now is palpable.
“I really didn’t want it to come out officially that I had an operation but I feel good, feel fresh. I feel (like) a new man,” he says, speaking while on the club’s current pre-season tour, which has taken them to Singapore after stops in Australia and Thailand.
Son arrived in Australia early to try to get himself back up to speed after playing in a home friendly for his country against El Salvador on June 20.
He wasn’t ready to feature against West Ham in Perth last week, but was due to start the game against Leicester City in Bangkok on Sunday that got abandoned before kick-off because torrential rain led to a waterlogged pitch. He had looked sharp in an open training session the previous evening.
“It was really tough moments,” Son, who turned 31 two weeks ago, says of last season. “I’m the type who is always hiding the pain. Last season, (I spent) the whole season in pain. It was incredible. I can’t even think about the pain, you know. Now I feel really good, fresh. The physios are still working on it, because it has only been a week to 10 days (training), so I’m looking forward to being in good shape.
“I’m ready to rock and roll.”
Hearing Son outline just how much the condition was hurting him, one wonders why he waited until the end of the season to have the operation.
“Probably people are thinking why didn’t I do the surgery as early as possible, but for me it felt like for the club during the season every single moment felt like a difficult moment,” he says. “I didn’t want to let the people down. I didn’t want to let the players and the staff down because that means a lot to me. And then the fans supporting me, I take the responsibility whether I played good or bad, with pain or not.
“One thing was clear, I didn’t want people to be let down by just going away in a tough moment because of the pain.”
Son’s words here are a sobering reminder of the relentlessness of the football schedule — especially in a season like the last one that uniquely had a World Cup plonked in the middle of it. One can understand why Son felt there was never a good time to take a few weeks off. Even though he was getting hammered for his performances.
“I’m not going to say anything because I took this decision and had to take the responsibility,” he says of how hard it was to take all the criticism he was getting knowing there were pretty sizable mitigating circumstances. “But the Premier League is one of the toughest leagues in the world. Even if you’re 100 per cent fit it’s tough. If you can perform only 60 or 70 per cent, yeah it’s going to be a killer.
“I took the decision and I take all the blame. One thing that was just clear in these tough moments (was) I didn’t want the players and the fans to be let down, so I was holding in my pain and I suffered but it was all my decision.
“Everybody thinks in a different way. Some people in pain want to let people know. I’m totally different. I didn’t want people to know. We are professional footballers — everyone has pain, everyone takes painkillers before the game because you are playing competitive sport and there is pain.
“I don’t know how many people go into games through the season feeling like, ‘Oh, wow, I feel 100 per cent fit without pain’. I think it’s maybe one or two games a season. Maybe. But you accept it because you love the sport and you have people behind you, supporting you. For me, it’s not important if people know or not. You take the decision and you have to perform.”
The build-up of the pain reached a crescendo on the final day of the season away at Leeds United.
“To be honest, the last game of the season was really painful,” Son says. “I was really close to giving up against Leeds. But when I looked at the staff, I couldn’t say, ‘There’s one more game and I’m going to have surgery now’. I was just closing my eyes, praying, ‘Please, let’s win this game’.” (Spurs did take the three points, winning 4-1 with Son playing for 76 minutes, but missed out on a Europa Conference League place because Aston Villa also beat Brighton 2-1 that day.)
It feels like a distant memory but earlier last season, on the eve of the World Cup break in mid-November, Son also had to have surgery — on a fractured eye socket picked up in a Champions League away win at Marseille. He then played every minute of South Korea’s four games in the tournament wearing a protective face mask.
The injury Son picked up at Marseille meant he had to wear a mask at the World Cup (Photo: Getty)
“Look, this is football,” he says. “I’m still here and fully fit. Nobody is thinking about these injuries any more.”
Son’s stoicism is obvious, so how did it feel when Spurs’ then-head coach Antonio Conte blasted the players for being “selfish” in his final press conference at Southampton in March? “Ummm… it is a bit painful but I think people see it in different ways,” he says diplomatically. “I don’t think he meant it. He was just in an aggressive way, an emotional way after the game.” (Tottenham had blown a late 3-1 lead to draw 3-3 with the club who eventually finished bottom of the Premier League.)
Son was frustrated at times last season by the role he was asked to play under Conte, but has kind words for the Italian.
“I think we all know… I’m grateful to him,” he says of Conte. “I can’t say anything bad about him because I take the blame. I should have done much, much better. Two years ago I won the Golden Boot and the expectation was high. The team needed me in a different way in the difficult moments and, for any reasons, pain or whatever, I couldn’t perform, so I still feel sorry for him.
“I was good with him. The season before was fantastic. I won the Golden Boot with him. I can’t say anything bad about him. I’m grateful to have worked with him. Obviously, the end was not ideal, not what we wanted, but I’m grateful and I’ve learned lots of things about football and being a human being, and about being more passionate.”
It’s striking to hear how much responsibility Son takes for what happened at Tottenham last season — just as his team-mate Cristian Romero did on Monday.
Both players appear desperate to make amends and both believe Postecoglou is the man to oversee fundamental changes in how the team play and their results.
Postecoglou sees the game in a very different way to Conte.
Wingers are hugely important in his system, and where Son was asked to do a lot of tracking back under his predecessor, Postecoglou will ask him to defend from the front, stay wide when Spurs have the ball and attack the box when the opposite winger has it.
Seasoned Postecoglou watchers say that plan should suit the Korean very well.
“This is how I used to play: on the touchline, one-v-one with the full-backs and creating problems for the defensive line,” Son says. “When I stay wide, we will have more space inside and (players) running into the space. Obviously, we didn’t talk about any individual roles but even when I wasn’t playing against West Ham I could literally see what my role will be. It’s simple. Everyone in his position knows now what to do and how to manage their game.”
Son talking about how he likes to stay close to the touchline is interesting, as back home in South Korea there was a lot of frustration last season at him being asked to often move inside to central midfield and open the space up for left wing-back Ivan Perisic to attack down that flank. This didn’t help the effectiveness of Son or the team, and it was felt that Conte needed to do more to recognise this system wasn’t working, rather than continue to do the same thing and hope something would click for Son and the team — which it never did.
Son couldn’t get into dangerous areas as frequently as he would have liked, and ended up taking his shots on average a couple of yards further out than he had in that Golden Boot season.
He was still getting a similar number of attempts away, but his expected goals (xG) per shot figure fell from 0.19 in 2021-22 to 0.12. Linked to that, he was averaging 3.3 touches in the opposition penalty area per 90 minutes — his lowest in five seasons and almost half the 6.1 he managed in 2017-18.
How will things be different this season? Well, for a start, much of the Postecoglou system is geared towards getting the ball to the wide players. The full-backs invert when his teams are building possession, which will be aimed at giving Tottenham more control in the middle of the pitch and then opening up the space and passing lanes to get the ball to Son and Dejan Kulusevski on the other side.
Postecoglou demands that his wingers stay high and wide to stretch the play, create overloads with the full-back and one of the No 8s, take on the opposition full-back and attack the penalty area, and go for the space directly in front of goal when the winger on the other side of the pitch has the ball.
A typical Celtic goal under Postecoglou over the past two seasons had one of the No 8s or full-backs sliding the ball through for one winger to beat his man and then cross for the other (or Kyogo Furuhashi, the centre-forward) to score.
“Son will be amazing under Ange,” predicts Adam Peacock, an Australian writer for Code Sports and a long-term Postecoglou follower.
“Likewise Kulusevski. They’re attacking players who love playing forward and going forward. You saw them under Conte and they were good on the break but imagine telling those guys to think about where they need to be defensively — it’s not exactly getting the best out of them. They should be liberated under Ange.”
It certainly seems that way, and Postecoglou appears particularly enthused by the prospect of working with the Korean.
“I know Sonny really well, I’ve known him for a long time,” Postecoglou said on Tuesday. “He’s an outstanding player. Especially the way I like teams to play with wingers who are a goal threat, he’s elite.
“He’s as good as anyone because he has that ability to play wide and play one on one. The fact that he scores goals is just priceless.”
The idea of Spurs going back on the front foot certainly appeals to Son.
“I’m really excited to be playing attacking football because we have quality players and can score many goals and win games,” he says.
Wingers in general hold a special place in Postecoglou’s heart. “I love a winger, so it’d have to be Jimmy Johnstone, mate,” he said in March, when asked which former Celtic players would best suit his style.
Bissouma says Postecoglou is giving Spurs confidence after frustrating season
Not that this means he goes easy on them — the feeling at Celtic was that the wingers had to be the team’s hardest-working players. It’s a good job Son is feeling so physically sharp now, because he will be asked to get through a huge amount of work.
In Postecoglou’s only game in charge so far, that Australian friendly against West Ham, Manor Solomon got a lot of joy out on the left as Tottenham’s passing patterns and movement often left him one-v-one with the opposition full-back. Spurs lost 3-2 but had 32 shots to West Ham’s seven.
“You could probably see against West Ham, it’s still a lot to improve and to change in the way we play but we want to have the ball, we want to be attacking more, play in their half, which I think is really important for us as a team and a club,” Son says. “The club has a style of playing football. You could see against West Ham it has been changed from last season.
Son at a sustainability upcycling event with local children in Bangkok (Photo: Tottenham Hotspur)
“You want to play in their half of the pitch, which is always good as a way to score goals — it’s a shorter distance than if you have 60, 70 metres in front of you. Managers are all different in the way they want to play but you have to accept what they want.”
Also looking ahead to 2023-24 on a personal level, Son says: “I just want to show that last season was not the Sonny we all know. The six seasons in a row, performing in a consistent way, wasn’t lucky. It was hard work. Last season, obviously, wasn’t the best but I think I learned most at 30 years old. This was the year I learned most. I can’t say it was a fantastic season but in terms of mentality, it was just as good as two seasons ago because I could see I could bring it back from where I started. This season, I just want to show the Sonny we all know is still there.”
Smashed hotels, diplomatic rows, missing players: When pre-season tours go wrong
As for the team, he adds: “When you’re wearing this shirt you should know you’re playing for Tottenham, playing in the Premier League, and it is not enough to give 99 per cent. If we think like this and stick together like a family, we can go back up the mountain and with no mess. This is very very important for us as a club.”
After the year just gone, no mess and no pain in the coming season would be a blessed relief for Son.
Son Heung-min was speaking at a sustainability upcycling event with local children from Second Chance Bangkok. Tottenham players helped the kids repurpose some of last season’s shirts into new school bags.
Mr Pink
SC Supporter
- Aug 25, 2010
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Will totally depend on how Richarlison does.
Personally I think Richarlison is going to have a cracking season.
JUSTINSIGNAL
Well-Known Member
- Jul 10, 2008
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Certainly a good option to have. Bringing in Solomon in the left as well will be another goal threat.
y1dk1d
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- Jun 9, 2012
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Depends how you see “cracking”.
Richarlison is a decent and very capable PL striker, but I’d be happy and surprised to see him hit 15+ in the league. I think we need another striker whether he’s seen as a starter before, or after Richy
Timberwolf
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- Jan 17, 2008
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Think his current role isn't ideal for him, unfortunately. He's so far wide and doesn't have that super acceleration anymore to get into as many shooting positions (which is where he truly shines). He looks more natural than he did under Conte last year and I expect he'll have a perfectly fine season, but get the feeling we won't see the superstar Son from 2-3 years ago.
I actually think he'll be more effective against stronger teams where we don't dominate the ball and he has a bit more space to play with. As a wide forward getting on the end of through-balls in space there's still pretty much no-one better in world football.
Solomon as a late-game sub vs tired legs looks absolutely ideal, though. Really not hard to see why he was so effective scoring off the bench for Fulham.
I actually think he'll be more effective against stronger teams where we don't dominate the ball and he has a bit more space to play with. As a wide forward getting on the end of through-balls in space there's still pretty much no-one better in world football.
Solomon as a late-game sub vs tired legs looks absolutely ideal, though. Really not hard to see why he was so effective scoring off the bench for Fulham.
yido_number1
He'll always be magic
- Jun 8, 2004
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Agree, it's early days but he's not suited to hugging the touch line
delawarespur
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- Aug 8, 2019
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You’re 100% right he is not well suited for the role. I actually do think he got into a lot of shooting positions today and shied away from shooting at times, which is unlike him. I trust Ange to get him into those positions even more, as the 1v1s on the left is the biggest question mark in the squad currently. Also think Maddison being on his side and close to him will hopefully mean more space for him even when we’re in a settled attack and some combinations involving them both might mitigate the need for 1v1 success.
chas vs dave
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- Jul 17, 2008
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Which is why we should think about a winger, if kane goes. Son would be great as a striker.
mmidgers
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- Jul 21, 2009
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Through the middle might suit him better, but he's not convincing out wide.
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