Heung-min Son has already made history in the United States, with his latest feat putting him above global icons Lionel Messi and LeBron James just days after leaving Tottenham for LAFC.
A new era at Tottenham Hotspur had already begun before the club kicked a ball in their first competitive match of the 2025/26 season.
Heung-min Son’s departure was announced during Spurs’ pre-season tour in South Korea, and it immediately stirred emotions across N17 and the wider football world, as the player long regarded as ‘Mr Tottenham’ brought an end to his decade-long stay, closing a chapter that defined an era.
Son is firmly a Tottenham legend, and while Spurs supporters mourn the loss of their captain, the club will take solace in the fact that they managed to collect a fee of £19.5 million, a respectable profit given the revenue he generated throughout his ten years in north London.
Tottenham legend Heung-min Son breaks global shirt sales record at LAFC
The former Tottenham captain has not taken long to make his mark in the MLS, with LAFC’s Co-President and General Manager John Thorrington revealing that Son has already smashed records since arriving in Los Angeles.
Speaking to talkSPORT, Thorrington explained that Heung-min Son’s LAFC shirt has become the best-selling jersey of any athlete across the globe, overtaking the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and basketball superstar LeBron James.
“This is now the second week where we are not just talking about the highest-selling football jersey in the MLS,” Thorrington said. “It is the highest-selling jersey of any sport in the world right now.”
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When pressed by host Andy Goldstein to clarify if he really meant Son’s shirt, Thorrington confirmed: “I am talking about Son. Right now, he has sold more jerseys than Messi.”
Still stunned, Goldstein questioned again if this included all athletes worldwide, to which Thorrington replied: “If you take from when he signed at LAFC to now, he has sold more jerseys than any other athlete in the world.”
“That is the scale of this,” Thorrington added.
Son’s popularity continues to deliver staggering numbers
While the statistic is astonishing, it should not come as a complete surprise given Heung-min Son’s global appeal and the fanbase he has built over the years.
At 33 years old, Son commands support from across the Middle East, a strong following in England from his Tottenham years, and now an ever-growing fanbase in the United States.
During his time at Tottenham, Daniel Levy was reported to have earned between £40 million and £60 million annually due to Son’s presence, a figure that experts believe Spurs will now miss out on.
The scale of his popularity was clear in north London, where an average of 5,000 Korean fans attended Tottenham home matches to watch their hero.