Son Heung-min faces a crossroads at Tottenham Hotspur this summer as he closes in on the final 11 months of his contract at the north London club.
The South Korean star turned 33 earlier this month and he has seen it all while at Spurs. Son went from wanting to leave the club just one year in before being convinced by Mauricio Pochettino to stay, to then forming a lethal partnership with Harry Kane, then came the despair of the 2019 Champions League final, a Puskas Award-winning solo goal, the Premier League Golden Boot and then finally two months ago becoming the first captain to lift a European trophy at Tottenham in 41 years.
Son is a legend at the club. Even the modest skipper admitted himself on that May evening in Bilbao that he could be considered one but for one night only if the rest of the team were as well. He has notched up 173 goals and 101 assists in 454 matches for Spurs and 204 goal involvements in 333 matches in the Premier League alone. He is one of the most recognisable names in the competition.
Now though his future remains clouded. football.london reported on MLS interest for Son early last month with his former Spurs team-mate Hugo Lloris at LAFC and now the Los Angeles side are reportedly trying to put together a move for him. With Saudi Pro League clubs also interested, those inside Tottenham maintain they have received no bids at this time for their captain.
Son is more open to a Spurs exit than he has been since that first summer after joining from Bayer Leverkusen. Those who worked with him last season got the sense that he was preparing himself for a potential Tottenham departure and the Europa League triumph was the perfect icing on the cake to secure his decade-long legacy at the club.
It ended a season in which Son struggled to find any rhythm with hamstring and foot injuries and ended up with just seven goals in the Premier League, his lowest total since the season he arrived at the club all the way back in 2015. Yet he still finished it by doing something so few Spurs captains before him were able to.
Spurs took up the option on Son's contract in January to ensure he was not a free agent this summer. While the club will be guided by what the South Korean star wants to do, that extra 11 months ensures they are unlikely to lose him for nothing unless he sees out his final season with another go at the Champions League.
It's worth noting though that Lloris did end up remaining at Tottenham in his final season for another six months before departing for Los Angeles on a free transfer in the January window. That the MLS regular season runs from late February until October makes it somewhat awkward for summer signings and next season's campaign will be interrupted by the World Cup.
Major League Soccer could be a good fit for Son on every level. It would give him a growing stage to star on alongside Lionel Messi at Inter Miami and LA has the biggest Korean population in the USA.
New Tottenham head coach Thomas Frank has not been able to confirm that Son will be staying for his first season in charge. In fact, he went as far as admitting that he has not even made a final decision on who his captain will be for this season. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the current skipper.
When asked whether Son should be able to dictate his own future, the Dane said: "It’s always tricky, situations like that. If that happens. Right now I have a player that is fully committed and training well, and will play tomorrow.
"If a player has been at a club a long time, then there will always be a decision for the club to take of course. And of course, the head coach and the guys who are in charge and this case will be with Daniel [Levy] and Johan [Lange]. Because there is something in it if someone wants to leave at a certain stage, then there can be something there. But the club will always decide in the end, of course."
If Son does remain at the club then Frank will have to decide how to use him best. The debate has always raged over whether he's better through the middle or down the left flank cutting in. Ange Postecoglou's system needed him to remain wide and hit the touchline and it never looked like an entirely comfortable fit. Jose Mourinho got the best out of Son in his prime, using him as a runner beyond Kane as the England captain dropped deep and picked out his team-mate's runs.
In his first match for Frank at Reading last Saturday, Son looked to be kept out wide on the left as he did under Postecoglou and although he won the two corners that led to the goals for Spurs, he never looked right and after the game appeared to be suffering from a back problem.
This Saturday brings matches against Wycombe and Luton, with Son set to play in one of them if fit, either at the training ground or at Kenilworth Road. Then comes the club's latest summer tour across the world.
With football.london having reported before that Son has tied up most of his image rights abroad himself - you are unlikely to find him on advertising in a Spurs shirt other than for match promotion - Tottenham actually make less from the Korean superstar than many imagine.
That's not to say it's nothing by any stretch of the imagination. The main income gained from the player comes from the lucrative pre-season tours to the Asia-Pacific region and Spurs have accordingly toured there every season since 2019 - barring the pandemic-affected summers. Some reports over the years have estimated the figure earned from each tour at as much as £10million.
Those tours and Son's mere presence at the club have also had a knock-on effect with brand interest in that big market for the club with sponsorship opportunities as well as the sheer number of supporters from that region who now follow Tottenham and those who could remain interested once the captain moves on to the next chapter in his career.
Spurs will arrive in Hong Kong on Monday before heading to Son's homeland of South Korea later in the week with friendlies against Arsenal and Newcastle in those locations. There are financial penalties involved if the club's big names do not appear in tour games and of course Son is the biggest of them all.
After that tour there awaits a potential reunion with Kane in Munich before a chance to win another piece of silverware with the UEFA Super Cup against PSG in Udine.
Ultimately Son should decide what comes next. He's given everything to Tottenham for 10 years and managed to complete that decade with the rarest of things at the club in the modern era - silverware. He would have left a legend regardless.