Tottenham might start pre-season without Heung-min Son
By Ryan Wrenn
Mauricio Pochettino’s pre-season plans hit a bit of a bump recently with news that Heung-min Son broke an arm recently while serving with the South Korea national team.
Tottenham’s 24-year-old winger started for South Korea in Tuesday’s match in Doha, Qatar, but fell awkwardly onto the pitch midway through the match.
Doctors quickly determined that Son’s right forearm was broken. With the summer off-season being relatively short and South Korea involved in more World Cup qualifiers at the end of August, the diagnosis quickly turned to a cure. Son underwent surgery on Thursday to accelerate his recovery.
That will still mean that Son is expected to be unavailable for any football activities at least until South Korea’s qualifiers at the end of August.
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From Spurs’ perspective, that means they might be without Son for the full pre-season — including a brief tour of the United States in July — and even the opening of the 2017/18 season on August 12th.
Son also missed both the pre-season and start of the term proper in 2016 when South Korea appeared in the Olympics in Brazil. He would hit the ground running though upon his return to north London, scoring five goals and creating two assists in his first six matches in all competitions.
That heat faded a bit as the autumn deepened, with Son popping back and forth from the bench as needed. With Harry Kane, Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli in the side, it was sometimes difficult for Pochettino to find room for the South Korean.
An injury to Kane and a need for a more direct, wide goal-scorer quickly brought Son back to the starting XI come spring however. He promptly added to his previous haul with eight goals and two assists from mid-March to mid-April.
In the end, Son scored 21 goals in all competitions for Tottenham — making him the third highest scorer behind Kane and Dele. Numbers like that go a long way to repaying the £30 million Spurs paid Bayer Leverkusen for him in the summer of 2015.
It’s safe to assume that Pochettino is banking on Son playing an even bigger role in the coming season. Thankfully an arm injury shouldn’t impair his ability to be as influential as he was last season, but missing both the pre-season and the start of the term remains far from ideal.