I miss him already. In the time that we’ve been away, Son Heung-Min has finalized his transfer to Los Angeles FC in MLS and was scheduled to fly into LAX on Tuesday night. (There was a live stream from the airport by a Korean TV station, though the stream cut out before Sonny arrived, apparently).
Sonny’s transfer hasn’t been officially announced by either Tottenham Hotspur or LAFC, but we know it’s coming and it’ll probably come, with great fanfare and even more tears, sometime Wednesday. In the meantime, we got a little more info about the transfer itself. Previous reporting had suggested Tottenham were to receive about £15m ($22m) in compensation from LAFC, an absurd amount for a MLS franchise, but not quite a record.
Now, it seems it IS a record — According to Tom Bogert, Sonny will head to Los Angeles for $26.5m (£20m). That’s $4.5m more than the previous record for Atlanta’s Emmannuel Latte Lath.
Honestly, that’s amazing and a lot more than I expected. And for those of you who think it’s still to cheap for Sonny, consider this: Spurs acquired Son for £22m from Bayer Leverkusen a decade ago, meaning Spurs basically broke even on a club legend after a decade of service and a Europa League trophy.
Now, nobody’s happy to see him go, but I think there’s general consensus that it was time. Reports emerged recently that Sonny had been offered a contract extension by Thomas Frank and the club, and he turned it down because he decided he had achieved everything he could at Spurs. Fair enough. He certainly did something Harry Kane never did — as fantastic as Kane was (and still is), he didn’t do what Son did: stick around during the hard times and win a trophy with Tottenham Hotspur. Kane will be forever known as one of Tottenham’s all-time best players, but I feel as though Sonny has eclipsed him in terms of legendary status.