Southampton will have few regrets about the way in which the club was run and how it performed in the early-to-mid-2010s, but missing out on the signing of Son Heung-min will always be quite a frustrating one for the south coast outfit.
Back in the summer of 2013, Mauricio Pochettino was embarking upon his first full season as manager of Southampton, having been controversially appointed to replace Nigel Adkins in January 2013.
Saints had finished 14th the year before but, with impressive recruitment and a continued strong youth development setup, they were determined to be ambitious and push on.
That season saw them finish eighth in the Premier League, narrowly missing out on European qualification, and continue to develop an impressive squad that saw three players, Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana and Rickie Lambert, all form part of England’s 2014 FIFA World Cup summer; with Jay Rodriguez only missing out due to injury.
It was a very good season for Pochettino and for Southampton, but there may well be a wonder as to how good it could have been had they brought in Son as well.
Son Heung-min opted not to join Southampton
In March 2019, Mauricio Pochettino revealed that Southampton tried to sign Son Heung-min from Hamburg and the Argentine even went as far as to suggest the move was ‘so close.’
Having began his professional career with Hamburg and made his debut in 2010, Son had quickly begun to establish himself as a very exciting prospect in the Bundesliga, especially with a 12-goal league campaign in the 2012/13 season, alerting Saints and Bayer Leverkusen.
Pochettino said: “We were very close but in the end he was so young and his family preferred, rather than leaving Germany and the Bundesliga, to keep him there and he preferred to move to Bayer Leverkusen rather than Southampton.”
It is believed that the fee to take Son from Hamburg to the BayArena was in the region of £8 million, and that obviously would have eventually represented incredible value for Saints, had they been able to get the deal over the line for themselves.
Instead, that summer saw Southampton make just three permanent additions with Dejan Lovren, Victor Wanyama and Dani Osvaldo, who was their club-record signing, brought in from Olympique Lyonnais, Celtic and Roma respectively.
So, it appears as though Son was deemed a ‘market opportunity’ for a smartly run Saints anyway, with no other players in his position brought in if they didn’t get their main target, Son, over the line.
Son Heung-min eventually earned Bayer Leverkusen a hefty fee
Having hit double figures in the Bundesliga in successive seasons for Bayer Leverkusen, they eventually managed to cash in on the South Korea international when he moved to Tottenham Hotspur, to finally link up with Pochettino, for a fee in the region of £18 million.
Making over 100% profit on a transfer in just two years is, naturally, a positive and impressive thing and, for most clubs, they will live with regret for having missed out on that – but Southampton aren’t necessarily most clubs in that regard.
For example, a year after missing out on the signing of Son, and the potential millions to be made therein, Southampton sold the aforementioned England trio of Shaw, Lallana and Lambert to Manchester United and Liverpool respectively, with the latter two heading to Merseyside.
As well as that, they also cashed in on Lovren, with the Croatia international also moving to Anfield, whilst Calum Chambers was sold on for a hefty fee to Arsenal, too.
That sort of level of recruitment and selling on high after buying low was something that Southampton were masters at, and Son wasn’t a once in a lifetime opportunity in that regard – but it would have been intriguing to see if he could have pushed them on from eighth in the 2013/14 season, and then seventh under the management of Ronald Koeman in the following campaign, after that mini exodus.
So, in the end, Southampton may not have been harmed too much from either a football or financial perspective - and yet there will still be a feeling that there could have been something extra special had Son joined. On the cusp of European football, Saints drew far too many games to really kick on - and Son could have been their point of difference before eventually delivering them yet another sizeable profit.