Los Angeles could soon have a new favorite Son.
Arguably Asia’s most famous athlete and its finest professional soccer player, 33-year-old South Korean Son Heung-min is reportedly close to joining the Los Angeles Football Club following a dazzling decade in north London as a Tottenham Hotspur.
After Son revealed last week that his departure from the English Premier League would come following a preseason tour with Tottenham that concluded Sunday in Seoul, multiple reports have surfaced about a deal sending Son to LAFC.
The $26 million reported transfer fee – the most expensive in Major League Soccer history – would exceed the $22 million Atlanta United paid for 26-year-old Ivory Coast forward Emmanuel Latte-Lath prior to the 2025 MLS season, a source familiar with the terms said.
The price tag would more than double LAFC’s most expensive signing, the 2020 acquisition of 19-year-old Uruguayan Brian Rodriguez as a young designated player.
Son would become the highest-paid player on the roster, surpassing fellow attacker Denis Bouanga, who is pursuing an MLS-best third consecutive 20-goal season.
“He’s a star in the Premier League,” Bouanga said through an interpreter. “He will be a star in the MLS. And that will make things easy to play with him. That will be a great thing.”
The partnership, which would make Bouanga and Son the most formidable offensive duo in MLS, should ramp up goal production if things go according to plan.
Alongside Bouanga’s power, verticality and finishing ability, Son can line up at any forward spot. Clinical with both feet and dynamically fast, Son has excelled at causing havoc on counter-attacks.
Twenty-three goals during the 2021-2022 campaign made him the first Asian player to win the EPL Golden Boot, which he shared with Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah.
Striking 173 goals in 454 competitive appearances for Tottenham, Son produced double-digit tallies in the EPL for eight straight years prior to last season, when he was slowed by injuries and finished just seven times.
Son exits Tottenham as the club’s leading assist man in the Premier League, delivering 72 of his 101 assists for the Spurs in the domestic league. His 198 goal involvements rank 13th all-time in the EPL. Since 2015, only Salah (270) and Son’s longtime Tottenham teammate, Harry Kane (231), contributed to more EPL goals.
Scoring the fifth-most goals in Tottenham history, Son also boasts 333 EPL appearances, which are second behind former Spurs captain and current LAFC goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, who played 361 games.
With Son possibly reuniting with Lloris in L.A., the deal would mark the third transfer of a Tottenham legend to LAFC in four years.
In 2022, Gareth Bale arrived in the summer to much fanfare but was not a regular contributor heading into the winter FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Still, Bale showed his incredible flair for the dramatic by scoring the latest goal in MLS history and saving LAFC’s MLS Cup victory.
With much less fanfare, Lloris, 38, Tottenham’s longest-tenured captain, made the move from White Heart Lane to Christmas Tree Lane last year, bringing leadership and a commitment to win that helped secure the club’s first U.S. Open Cup in 2024.
The possibility of Son’s transfer to LAFC was first reported July 1 by The Korea Daily.
Informed that his minutes were likely to be reduced under new Spurs head coach Thomas Frank, Son made it clear that his most important priority moving forward was preparing for next summer’s FIFA World Cup, his second as South Korean captain.
“It’s likely to be my last World Cup and I want to give everything I have in that environment,” Son said ahead of next summer’s tournament in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. “I want to be able to play football happily, which I think will play the biggest role in my future decision-making. I am still trying to organize my thoughts around that.”
Despite finishing one spot clear of the EPL relegation zone last season, Tottenham won its first European trophy since 2008, beating Manchester United to claim the Europa League.
“Winning the Europa League made me feel I had achieved everything I could here,” Son said prior to his emotional last match for Tottenham on Sunday, an exhibition against Newcastle in front of 64,733 spectators at the Seoul World Cup Stadium. “I need a new environment for a fresh challenge.”
