One question for each 2026 World Cup team. Can South Korea build on 2022 and help Son Heung-min reach the pinnacle?
Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group A preview. You can also read previews of Mexico, Czechia, and South Africa.
Can South Korea build on 2022 and help Son Heung-min reach the pinnacle?
Son Heung-min is famous in a way that very few soccer players are. Outside of Messi and Ronaldo, vanishingly few athletes are the objects of singular mass obsession like Son Heung-min.
Son is solely responsible for Tottenham Hotspur’s massive popularity among South Koreans, and more broadly among people throughout East Asia and the East Asian diaspora.1In the United States, you frequently meet non-Korean Asian-Americans who nonetheless chose to follow Spurs because of Son. Of course, the cheap joke here is that this actually makes Son a villain who has cursed them with the terrible burden of Spurs fandom. Through a decade in north London, he racked up 173 goals in 454 appearances, good for top 10 all-time in both categories for the club and cementing his status as a beloved club legend.
His legacy for South Korea is just as strong, with 142 caps, 54 goals, and one of the most emotionally intense international titles in the 21st century — a 2018 Asian Games gold medal that earned an exemption from military service that threatened to derail his trajectory as a top-flight footballer.
But there is one thing still left for Son to accomplish. By leading South Korea to the round of 16 or better, Son would be the key player on the first Asian team ever to win a knockout round game outside of Asia.2North Korea made the quarterfinals in 1966, but that was the first knockout stage match after the group stage in that tournament.
An alternative question for South Korea might be “How do you say quinto partido in Korean:”3Google Translate says “다섯 번째 게임” but I don’t speak Korean so I can’t vouch for accuracy.
Since reemerging as a dominant side in Asian soccer in the late 1990s, South Korea have been ever-presents at the World Cup, but only made it past the round of 16 as co-hosts in 2002 when they allegedly rode suspiciously friendly officiating to the semifinals.4Very allegedly, and the allegations are certainly tinged with European xenophobia. But as this Vice article articulates, South Korea definitely did benefit from some poor refereeing against Italy and Spain.
Outside of that, it has only been the group stage or the round of 16.
Son’s World Cup career has been marked by steady improvement. No wins in 2014, followed by a dramatic win over Germany giving the 2018 campaign a positive final note despite an early elimination, followed by a magical assist from Son heroics to create Hwang Hee-chan’s winner to lead South Korea into the knockout rounds.
2026 is an opportunity for Son to keep that trajectory going and in the process potentially cement his status as the greatest East Asian player of all time.
To do that, South Korea will need to lean on Son’s supporting cast more than ever, and the talent should be there for them to be competitive. Headlined by Bayern Munich central defender Kim Min-jae and Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Lee Kang-in, South Korea has a solid base of top-tier European players. The roster also has a mix of experienced Europe-based pros, like the aforementioned Hwang and Mainz’s Lee Jae-sung and rising stars like Borussia Mönchengladbach’s Jens Castrop.
Up front, Son will hopefully be aided by Cho Gue-sung. The tall striker been plagued by injuries in recent years, but has a decent goalscoring record for the national team and was part of that dramatic comeback against Portugal last World Cup and has broken into European soccer more or less successfully since the last tournament. If you’re less tuned into Korean soccer, you might remember Cho from being very hot.5He’s got 1.5 million followers on Instagram, and it’s not because people love Denmark’s FC Midtjylland.
The ingredients are mostly there for South Korea to make a run this tournament. If the core of the team can build a platform for a few more great Son moments, they have a chance to make history this summer.6Also the second place team in this group plays their first knockout stage match in Los Angeles, which means that even if they come in second, South Korea will play a knockout match in a region home to 320,000 Korean Americans.
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