By the end of the video Son's dad appears, he's apparently following everywhere Son goes. Heard that ppl at Leverkusen didnt really like him as they felt he's interfering the communication btwn Son and the club. There are several cases of famous 'soccer daddies'(no i didnt want to use THAT word ) for S. Korean players: fathers of Park Jisung or Ki Seungyong are very famous(notorious, to some people, especially journalists) and Son's is another famous daddy.
The dad is a football coach and well understands that S. Korean football is all about factionalism. Apparently he didnt want his son to play in the system so sent him to Germany when he was very young. He also had controversies with the national team several times, requesting the Korean FA to not call up his son.
I reserve my judgement on him as his strict management of his son might have brought the player this far, but I guess the dad wouldnt be fan's favorite here. We'll see.
Korean fan born and raised in NY here. I've been lurking on here ever since the rumors of Son to Tottenham first surfaced. Decided to finally sign up and wanted to reply to this. Son's father might be overbearing but he's the reason Son as we know him exists, with his current strengths and weaknesses. His father trained him relentlessly from a young age to perfect his shooting technique and to be ambidextrous. Son mentioned in previous interviews (can't bother digging them up right now) that he would spend days just practicing shooting over 1,000 times per day. That's why he can score goals at angles from which he has no business even taking a shot, right foot left foot both with aplomb.
On the other hand, his father also kept him from playing in too many matches as a youth as he felt it would enforce bad habits. This is where his weaknesses come into play, in that he can seem lost in buildup play even while being such a ruthless finisher. Obviously he's been getting better these past several seasons but you'll see what I'm talking about.
Of course we've all seen the highlight reels and goal compilations, but sometimes watching a 'ball-touch' vid can be more helpful to get an idea of what his overall game is like.
This match against Uruguay he was wearing the number 9 with pink boots. He's not hard to spot lol. When he's on form and has space to run at defenders he's an absolute terror to the opposition. When he's on his A-game you'd swear he was CR7 in FIFA. But when he's low on form/confidence he can go missing in matches. Thus far he's always bounced back with purple patches of goals but I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a hat trick one week then be anonymous the next. All the English-speaking Korean soccer fans I speak to would say this is his biggest weakness: consistency. I guess at 23 years old we can't complain too much.
There's been plenty said about his Bundesliga goal-scoring record so nothing more to say there. But I didn't see his Champion's League stats mentioned, because in his first season at Bayer he scored 0 goals and looked pretty innocuous. Then in his second season (last year) he scored 5 of Bayer's overall 15 UCL goals. So he is certainly still developing and sometimes we forget that he's been in the Bundesliga scoring goals since he was a teenager.
As for the military issue, since someone asked for a recap, basically Son is stuck in a sh!tty confluence of factors working against him. He was born too late to exploit a loophole for middle school dropouts which Lee Chung-Yong (formerly at Bolton, now at Crystal Palace) used to gain exemption. Now that loophole is apparently reopening but is only open to people born after 1996. He missed exemption with the 2012 Olympic squad (sorry for knocking out Team GB) that won Bronze and then missed it again in 2014 when Korea won Gold in the Asian Games. That one hurt especially, since not only was it one of his last chances to gain exemption, the Korean FA told Leverkusen that Son only had to show up for the Final. Basically they were willing to make a farce of the competition in order to get Son his exemption. Bayer refused to release him for that single game, his future be damned. Now he only has the 2016 Olympics and the 2018 Asian Games, unless Korea makes some serious noise in the 2018 World Cup. Given how crap we were in Brazil 2014, I wouldn't be banking on that option..
As for deferring service based on residency or fabricating a medical loophole, there is a long string of celebrities/pop stars/etc. who have destroyed their careers by attempting such things. Son would effectively become persona non grata. The question remains if Son can become a big enough star to force the issue and sway public opinion if the time comes for him to report for duty and he hasn't gained exemption. It would pretty much take an Act of Congress (sorry, don't know what the Korean equivalent term is) to get him an exemption by fiat. Even then there would be very vocal opposition, regardless of how big a star Son might be.
Sorry for the long post but just had to add my 2 cents.
edit: I managed to sneak the first half against Everton on Saturday while on vacation with my family. It looked like Everton were leaving huge swaths of space behind their line from what I saw. Perfect conditions for Son to absolutely wreak havoc...
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