Son Heung-min's Journey: From Tottenham to LAFC
Son Heung-min didn’t dream of Hollywood nights or palm trees when Los Angeles came calling. He dismissed it.
When LAFC first made their move, the Tottenham Hotspur captain’s response was blunt: MLS was where careers went to cool down, not where his was supposed to go next.
“I thought, ‘Why would I go to MLS already? I’m definitely not going,’” Son recalled on the podcast “The Late Run,” whose latest episode dropped Friday. At that point, he was still leading the line in the English Premier League, after breaking through in the Bundesliga with Hamburger SV. From that vantage point, the United States felt like the wrong step at the wrong time.
For a long while, that was that.
From firm ‘no’ to new challenge
Son had spent a decade at Tottenham, becoming one of the Premier League’s most feared forwards and a symbol of consistency in North London. Even as he moved into his 30s, few doubted he could continue in Europe’s top five leagues.
So when he left Spurs last summer and signed for LAFC, the move jolted fans in South Korea and abroad. It looked, from the outside, like a sudden pivot. Inside Son’s camp, the shift had been slow, deliberate — and driven by a growing itch.
The turning point came with a ticking clock: one year left on his Tottenham contract.
“When I had one year left on my contract, I felt that I needed a new challenge,” Son said. The idea of change, which he had brushed aside before, started to nag at him.
His agent pushed the door open. If Son wouldn’t commit to MLS, he could at least listen.
“My agent suggested that I have a meeting with LAFC, so we spoke over Zoom,” Son said. That call altered everything. On the screen, he saw a club that had tracked him for a long time, not a franchise chasing a late-career headline.
“I realized that LAFC had been following me for a long time, and I could feel how genuine their interest was. That made me decide to move.”
The skepticism began to crack. What Son had once seen as a retirement route started to look like a serious project.
A league he misread
Son is honest enough to admit it: he misjudged MLS.
Having come through the Bundesliga and then flourished in the Premier League, he viewed American soccer from afar and placed it well below Europe’s elite competitions. The reputation of MLS as a landing spot for aging stars shaped his thinking.
That image did not survive his first months in Los Angeles.
“I didn’t know much about MLS before coming here, but I was surprised and happy to see the stadiums packed for every game,” he said.
The atmosphere, the noise, the full stands — they challenged every assumption he had carried across the Atlantic. The league, he realized, was not just growing; it was demanding more from its marquee players.
After the World Cup, that responsibility feels heavier. Son sees it clearly.
“After the World Cup, it is now the responsibility of the players and the league to keep that momentum going,” he said.
From a reluctant Zoom call in London to packed nights in Los Angeles, Son’s journey to MLS started with a firm refusal. It has quickly turned into one of the league’s most intriguing tests: can a player forged in Europe’s fiercest arenas help push American soccer into its next phase, rather than simply enjoy its sunset?
