Dispatches from the present
In 2019, in a game against Burnley, Tottenham striker Son Heung-Min received the ball deep in his own half and took off towards the goal. Whenever the South Korean sprints down the field, he looks dangerously, terrifyingly fast. But on that day, he seemed to click into another gear, and then another. He dribbled almost the full length of the field (more than eighty yards) leaving a trail of bewildered defenders in his wake, before calmly slotting the ball into the back of the net. (The goal won the Puskas Award, granted by FIFA for the “most aesthetically significant goal” of a calendar year.) The crowd, both euphoric and stunned, continued to applaud for minutes after the celebrations were over.
Typically, after commentators are done showering Son with praise for his showstopping performances, they inevitably also remark on how well liked he is, by his teammates and even his opponents. The South Korean superstar also elicits devotion from fans—not only for his breathtaking speed and dazzling finishes, but also because, unlike so many professional athletes today, Son plays with the glee of a child. At times, it seems as if he never stops smiling.
This season, for reasons that aren’t quite clear, Son hasn’t been in top form. But when the Tottenham manager Antonio Conte chose not to start him, he came off the bench and scored a blistering hat trick in thirteen minutes. Right foot, left foot, right foot. After the first two goals (both absolute screamers), the normally joyous Son barely celebrated. How dare you doubt me, his now unsmiling face seemed to say, let me remind you who I am.
Last month, during a Champions League match for Tottenham, Son fractured his orbital bone. The injury sent his home nation into a panic: would their captain recover in less than three weeks? He emerged from a successful surgery, fit to play, with a protective carbon mask. So beloved is Son that South Korean fans in Qatar have been donning their own Zorro masks in solidarity.
My own Son obsession has only taken hold in the past few years, but I have supported South Korea at every World Cup I can remember. My parents lived in Seoul for several years and they passed on their love for their temporary home to my brother and me: my Indian father speaks Korean with no trace of an accent, my Indian mother, who learned how to cook from an ajumma, craved kimchi when she was pregnant me in Seoul. (To this day, when I am in bed with a cold, my mother’s kimchi-jjigae is the comfort food I want.) I don’t have any Korean blood, but my Asian pride is strong, and the Taeguk Warriors have always been my team. Dae-Han-Min-Guk!
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South Korea entered the final day of group play on Friday with only a single point, having drawn with Uruguay and lost against Ghana. To go through to the next round, they not only needed to beat Portugal, they also needed Uruguay to beat Ghana, but only by a slim margin. (The last games of the group stages have had all the drama of knockout stages with the added intrigue of teams needing other games to have specific score lines. The commentators constantly reminding viewers of every possible permutation have seemed exhausted by the mental arithmetic.)
Winning alone was going to be tough task for Korea. Portugal, who had beaten both Uruguay and Ghana, look capable of winning the whole thing (aging, narcissistic, record-greedy captain notwithstanding). To make things harder still, Paulo Bento, the Portuguese manager of the South Korea team, was banished to the stands after getting a red card for his furious protestations after their dramatic 3-2 defeat to Ghana.
Within minutes of kick off, Korea’s tough task got tougher. The 39-year-old Portuguese center back Pepe (who is more than twice as old as his youngest teammate) released his right back Diogo Dalot down the wing. Dalot found Ricardo Horta who in turn found the goal. Afterwards, the camera panned to Son urging his team to rally. Before the half was over Kim Young-gwon equalized from a corner, and hope returned once more.
Although they didn’t need a result, Portugal showed no signs of wanting to settle for a draw, and as the game progressed, there was a growing sense that if South Korea were to prevail, they were going to need a moment of magic from their masked hero. Every time the ball fell to Son’s feet, the crowd got discernibly louder. In the second half, Son switched from the left to the right wing, perhaps to save him from having to drop deep to defend Dalot, who continued to make attacking runs up the field. Son played unselfishly all game—letting his teammates take corners and free kicks that another player of his quality would have claimed for himself—but not brilliantly. As the clock wound down, another Son miracle seemed increasingly unlikely.
Then, in the ninetieth minute, he received the ball deep in his own half and took off toward the goal. After sprinting the length of the field, Son, who had drawn three defenders, slowed down so much it appeared the world had slowed down around him. He stopped just outside the box and threaded an impeccable ball through the legs of Dalot to the substitute Hwang Hee-chan, who struck the ball cleanly into the back of the net. Perfection, chaos, bliss.
The full time whistle blew—they had won!—but the South Korean players and their fans still had to pray that Uruguay, who were two goals up against Ghana, did not score again. Karma was on their side. Ghana, still nursing a grudge from the 2010 World Cup (when a Luis Suárez handball broke the nation’s heart), seemed happy to time-waste just to spoil Uruguay’s fun and make Suárez cry. (Despite their own team’s loss, Ghanaian fans were seen jubilantly celebrating Uruguay’s departure outside the stadium.) After an agonizing eight minutes, the other full-time whistle blew and the South Korean players, who had formed a circle around some phones in the middle of the field, started jumping for joy. In the crowd, some fans were screaming, others crying out of happiness. Son, unmasked, collapsed in a blubbering heap. Sometimes, joy can’t be contained in a smile.