THE tears of joy at full-time of May's Europa League final were a tell-tale sign for Son Heung-min.
He knew his task was complete, that he could finally go down as a bonafide Spurs’ legend having ended the trophy curse.
And that it would be the perfect way to say goodbye.
No wonder all that emotion came pouring out as he wept like a baby in the arms of his father Son Woong-jung and close pal James Maddison on the Estadio de San Mames pitch.
Now Son has revealed that he is calling time on his decade with the North London club after his last game on Sunday, fittingly back home in Seoul.
It will technically be a pre-season friendly against Newcastle.
But in reality it will be a 90-minute love-in to the greatest Asian player to grace the Premier League in front of thousands of his most ardent fans.
Anyone who has attended a game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium since it opened in 2019, and White Hart Lane before it during Sonny’s time at Spurs, will be well aware of the army of Korean supporters who regularly make the pilgrimage over to watch their icon.
It has become such an everyday experience that long ago we stopped remaking on just how amazing it is that one man can generate so much attention.
Korean flags are spotted at every home game and it is not uncommon to see fans filming solely Son throughout a whole match, reprising their own version of ‘playercam’ we used to see on Sky years ago.
When Spurs went on a pre-season tour to South Korea under Antonio Conte in 2022, the club claimed that 12 million of the country’s 51m population were Tottenham fans.
On home matchdays, the club regularly sell 700 ‘Son 7’ shirts.
He has been a commercial phenomenon, but much more than that, he has been a fantastic player who will go down as one of the finest in Premier League history, not just Tottenham’s.
Signed in 2015 from Bayer Leverkusen, he became the most expensive Asian player ever.
But his £22million transfer fee would soon be regarded as one of the biggest bargains the Prem had ever seen. Perhaps THE biggest, when you consider the commercial revenue he put into Tottenham’s coffers.
Son was not an instant hit in North London, though.
He only started 13 Premier League games in his first campaign, netting just four goals, and actually considered leaving the club after only one season and going back to Germany for more regular game-time.
The club did not want that, though, and so the “quiet, nice” winger, as his then-boss Mauricio Pochettino described Son, fought for his place and things started to turn.
He struck up a brilliant relationship, both on and off the pitch, with Harry Kane.
The pair would go on to smash the record for most Premier League goal combinations between two players, setting it at 47, a massive 11 above the next-best achieved by Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard at Chelsea.
Kane was the known as the goal-getter of the dynamic duo, going on to become the club’s record scorer with 280 before leaving for Bayern Munich two years ago for £86m.
But Son in his own right has become one of the most lethal marksmen the Premier League has ever seen.
Only 15 players have netted more than his 127 Prem strikes.
While the 23 he hit in the 2021-22 campaign - his best-ever haul - saw him share the golden boot award with Liverpool’s Mo Salah.
In total for Spurs he has racked up an enormous 173 goals and 101 assists during his 454 appearances, consistently performing under a range of managers with differing styles, from attack-minded Pochettino and Ange Postecoglou, to the pragmatic Conte and Jose Mourinho.
Son developed a reputation for kindness - former team-mate Gareth Bale once called him the “nicest man in football” - but with a steely determination, as well as his obvious quality.
That grit may well have been instilled by his “strict and scary” task-master father growing up, where he would make Son do keepy-uppies for four hours.
Though known as the David Beckham of South Korea, and though he has dated Korean pop-stars, Son has largely sacrificed his love life to get every ounce out of his talent.
He said back in 2019: “My father says this and I agree, (that) when you marry, the number one will be family, wife and kids, and then football. I want to make sure that while I play at the top level, football can be number one.”
His commitment helped the team reach the 2019 Champions League final, where they lost 2-0 to Liverpool, and the 2021 Carabao Cup final too, where they were defeated to Manchester City, and finally this year’s Europa League final, where they beat Manchester United 1-0.
He had been made captain by then by Postecoglou, though ironically did not look the same player as he had been in years gone by.
In truth, Son was never quite as good after Kane left, and injuries hampered his form last term - as did Spurs’ miserable Premier League results.
He is believed to have first considered leaving the club around Christmas.
After winning in Bilbao, putting a bow on his decade at the club, that became a strong desire and now the MLS, most likely, beckons.
After May’s final, having at long last capped his stellar Spurs career with silverware, Son joked that now “let’s say I’m a legend. Why not? Only today!”
The truth is he will bow out as one of the greatest players of the Premier League era, not just for Tottenham or from Asia, but for any club and from any continent.