Son Heung-min has agreed to a contract with Los Angeles FC, finalising his move to Major League Soccer after a decade at Tottenham Hotspur. The 33-year-old attended LAFC’s home Leagues Cup win against Tigres on Tuesday, watching from a luxury suite, and will be introduced at a news conference later on Wednesday.
The club showed the forward on the stadium video board late in the first half as he waved to roaring fans thrilled by their team’s landmark acquisition. LAFC, a deep-pocketed club with significant success in their first eight seasons of existence, reportedly paid a fee of more than $20m (£15m), which could end up being the most for an MLS move.
Son scored 173 goals in 454 competitive appearances for Spurs and was given a memorable farewell last week in Seoul during Tottenham’s exhibition match against Newcastle, getting a guard of honour from both teams and tearfully exiting in the second half while nearly 65,000 fans roared.
South Korea’s most popular athlete has chosen an auspicious stage for the next chapter of his career. Los Angeles has the world’s largest ethnic Korean population outside Korea, with the city’s vibrant Koreatown district sitting a couple of miles from LAFC’s BMO Stadium.
LAFC are sixth in the Western Conference but with multiple games in hand on every team in front after participating in the Club World Cup. Son will be reunited in Los Angeles with his former Tottenham teammate Hugo Lloris, who has been outstanding since becoming LAFC’s goalkeeper last season.
Son seems to be a better fit for LAFC than Olivier Giroud, who moved to Lille last month after one disappointing year in California. LAFC play a counterattacking, speed-based style that did not suit Giroud’s goalscoring strengths, whereas Son should be at home in such a system.
