Son Heung-min
Football · Korea
Korea’s football face in Europe — Spurs legend, Golden Boot winner, then a move to MLS.
Updated Jul 23, 2026
- Team
- Los Angeles FC
- Active since
- 2010 (Bundesliga debut)
- Has played for
- Hamburger SV · Bayer Leverkusen · Tottenham Hotspur · South Korea national team
Key stats
- Tottenham: 454 appearances, 173 goals across a decade before the 2025 exit
- 2021–22 Premier League Golden Boot: 23 goals (shared with Mohamed Salah) — first Asian winner
- First Asian player to 100 Premier League goals
- Captained Spurs to the 2025 UEFA Europa League title
- FIFA Puskás Award (2019–20) for the solo goal vs Burnley
- MLS: LAFC from Aug 2025 — record incoming transfer fee for the league at the time
Son Heung-min was born on 8 July 1992 in Chuncheon, South Korea. He left for Germany as a teenager, debuting for Hamburger SV in the Bundesliga in 2010, then joining Bayer Leverkusen before Tottenham signed him in 2015 for a then-record fee for an Asian player.
Over a decade in north London he became a Spurs identity: 173 goals, a Puskás-winning solo run, the 2021–22 Golden Boot shared with Mohamed Salah, and the first Asian to reach 100 Premier League goals. As captain he helped end Spurs’ long wait for a major trophy by winning the 2025 Europa League.
In August 2025 he left for LAFC in MLS, closing a ten-year Tottenham chapter that Korean and London audiences had shared every weekend.
Son’s importance was never only goals. He showed that an East Asian attacker could become a Premier League talisman without being treated as a temporary exotic. The MLS chapter will decide whether his late career is a victory lap or a second act — but the Spurs years already rewrote what Korean footballers are allowed to become in Europe.
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