Tottenham to trigger Son Heung-min extension

Tottenham Hotspur are to trigger a one-year option on Son Heung-min’s contract to commit his future to the club beyond the current season.

The Spurs and South Korea captain signed his latest deal in 2021 which expires in seven months’ time and it is understood that his club holds the power to extend for a further year.

Spurs only need to inform Son they have triggered their option and Telegraph Sport understands they fully intend to do so.

It means Son will head into a second decade at the club after joining from Bayer Leverkusen in 2015 in a deal worth £22 million, which has been rated as one of Spurs’ finest achievements in the transfer market in the modern era.

Ange Postecoglou appointed the 32-year-old captain at Spurs after Hugo Lloris’ departure, having played a huge part in the club emerging as Champions League regulars during his nine-and-a-half years at the club.

The forward has reached double figures for goals in all but his first season at the club, with his haul of 123 in the Premier League making him the joint-third top scorer currently playing in the competition. Only Mohamed Salah (164) and Jamie Vardy (140) have scored more.

Son was asked about his contract earlier this season and insisted he was focused on ending Spurs’ trophy drought, which dates back to 2008, rather than looking at a new deal.

While at the club, Son has reached the final of the Champions League and EFL Cup but has yet to win a trophy.

“I am fully focused on this year and just want to win something that everybody at the club – the players, all around – deserves,” he said. “That’s what I’m working for.

“In the future you never know what will happen, but I will give everything for this club because it’s been almost 10 years and I give everything.

“I still have a contract with the club which is the very important thing and I just want to give everything until my contract [expires].”

Spurs are lying in seventh place in the Premier League, with 16 points, nine behind leaders Liverpool, but just two points off fourth place.

Postecoglou’s side are also well-placed in the 36-team Europa League table, where they sit second on goal difference after three wins out of three, and have reached the EFL quarter-finals, with a home tie against Manchester United scheduled for next month.

Son is neutral’s favourite who deserves a silver lining at Spurs

Modern football has little place for the neutral’s favourite, but Son Heung-min might be the closest thing. Admittedly there will be objections from fans of teams he has wronged. Occasionally he has taken some laughable dives and Arsenal supporters are unlikely to feel warm feelings either. Presumably that mood is echoed in North Korea.

But in the main Son is a player who transcends football’s current climate of hostility towards everyone except your own lot. A few factors are at play here. There is the slightly patronising notion of “playing with a smile on his face” which is applied disproportionately to non-white players, as if it is a surprise.

Still, it is hard not to warm to a striker whose default setting is sincere selflessness, quite apart from the arrogance you might expect for the Premier League’s 19th-highest scorer of all time. Fans can smell inauthenticity and Son’s many acts of decency never seem contrived: expressing guilt after José Mourinho and Antonio Conte were sacked; paying for a chef to cook high-end Korean food for Spurs training ground employees; publicly accepting Rodrigo Bentancur’s apology for saying South Koreans “all look the same”.

These moments are almost burnished by the times Son has shown a spikier side. You do not reach his level by spending your every waking hour as Roger Hargreaves’s Mr Good and Son is no Gary Lineker.

There was visible anger at being substituted against Aston Villa just this weekend, a near-scrap with Hugo Lloris at half-time in a pandemic game against Chelsea, and four red cards across his career to date, occasionally from moments of proper temper-losing petulance.

He shoved Jefferson Lerma at Bournemouth in 2019 and was sent off. Clearly this is not something you will be encouraging child footballers to emulate, but what could be more relatable than such a slipping of the veneer when provoked one too many times during a football match?

It helps that he is so good at his job and a joy to watch when at his best, incisive, deadly and hardworking. Only Harry Kane, Mo Salah and Jamie Vardy have scored more Premier League goals than Son since his debut in 2015, and Son leapfrogs Vardy if you factor in assists too. His versatility is demonstrated by the number of goals he scores with his “wrong” foot. Son has 48, more than any other player since 2015. Kane is his closest competitor with 36.

Of course he is beloved at Spurs too and was immediately forgiven for missing a one-on-one against Manchester City last season, because it might have handed the title to Arsenal. Every Spurs game is attended by a significant number of Korean fans making a pilgrimage to Tottenham but it is not just them making the extra noise when his name is read out before kick-off. He has risen to the challenge of replacing Kane as a focal point on the pitch and in supporters’ affections.

Ange Postecoglou has effectively promised a trophy for Tottenham this season, their first in 17 years. As he commits his future to the club again, few would be more deserving to lift it than Son.