This is going to be shocking news to some of you — Son Heung-Min is officially the Best Footballer in Asia. Tottenham’s club captain, currently with South Korea at the Asian Cup, just received the award for the seventh straight time.
Seven. Straight. Years.
The award, presented by Titan Sports, is a bit of an odd duck — it’s open to both Asian footballers who play for their national teams as well as footballers of any nationality that play for club teams on the Asian continent. So Sonny wins the award despite playing for an English club because he’s an Asian international footballer. Same with Kim “Monster” Min-jae, who came in second. Hilariously, none other than Cristiano Ronaldo came in third as he’s currently playing for al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, an AFC league.
And somehow it gets better. The award has only been in existence since 2013. In that time, only twice has a footballer not named Son Heung-Min won it — the initial award in 2013 (Keisuke Honda), and 2016 (Shinji Okazaki). They ought to just rename it the “Son Heung-Min is the Best Footballer in Asia Forever Award” and be done with it.
OK, that’s not quite fair. I honestly thought that Sonny’s international teammate and PSG striker Lee Kang-in had an outside chance at this award (he didn’t place), and interestingly Bayern Munich defender Kim halted a streak of four consecutive Son wins to take the South Korean Footballer of the year award in 2023. That puts Son in the weird and slightly awkward position of being the best footballer in Asia and yet only the second best footballer in South Korea.
Whatever. Sonny is good at football and I hope he wins all the things and still somehow comes back to us healthy as soon as possible.