Son Heung-min has completed a move from Tottenham Hotspur to Los Angeles FC in what is a record Major League Soccer transfer.
Son has officially ended his 10-year stay at Spurs, where he scored 173 goals in 454 appearances and led the team to Europa League glory in May.
After an agreement between Tottenham and LAFC was struck for a deal in excess of £20million, the 33-year-old arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday and a day later he has finalised his transfer, which is the highest fee paid by an MLS club for a player.
Son joined Spurs in 2015 from Bayer Leverkusen. After a tough debut campaign the South Korea captain went on to become one of the club’s best ever players and made himself a Premier League great in the process.
Alongside old partner in crime Harry Kane, Son holds the record for the most goal involvements by a duo in the Premier League, with the pair assisting each other on a record 47 occasions in the competition.
The Chuncheon-born attacker also won the league’s Golden Boot award in the 2021-22 season after scoring 23 times and he sits 17th in the list of all-time scorers in the division with 127 goals.
Under former boss Mauricio Pochettino, Son’s consistent displays helped turn Tottenham into genuine title contenders but silverware continued to allude them after a second-placed finish in 2017 was followed by a Champions League runner-up spot two years later.
Whilst various members of Pochettino’s team left not long after the Argentinian’s winter departure in 2019, Son stayed to work under Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte before he was tasked with leading a new era by Ange Postecoglou.
Postecoglou named Son as his captain in the wake of Kane’s high-profile switch to Bayern Munich and Hugo Lloris’ departure from the first team and after a roller coaster two seasons under the Australian, they achieved the holy grail together on May 21.
Son was consigned to a place on the bench in Bilbao for the Europa League final against Manchester United following an injury-affected campaign, but was introduced to make his final competitive appearance for Spurs to help them win 1-0 and end a 17-year wait for silverware.
It etched Son’s name into the history books as he became only the fourth captain in Spurs’ history to lift a European trophy after Danny Blanchflower, Alan Mullery and Steve Perryman.
The popular South Korean now departs for LAFC on a two-year deal, where he will renew acquaintances with Lloris and move to Los Angeles, which boasts one of the largest Korean populations in the world, ahead of next summer’s World Cup in the United States.
