“It wasn’t easy to cook at the house, but we divided chores so if, say, I was in charge of laundry, Heung-min would be in charge of washing the dishes.”
Kim Min-hyeok (a tall and imposing center-back for Seongnam FC, recently relegated form the Korean top flight) explains how it was living as a teenager Son Heung-min when the two of them, along with another young Korean, Kim Jong-pil, shared a house having all moved to Germany to play for Hamburg’s youth teams in 2008.
Fourteen years on, Kim is speaking to The Athletic at his club’s training ground just outside Seoul, while Son has developed into a global superstar with Tottenham Hotspur. They feel like they are a faraway world because of their shared experiences as teenagers in Hamburg.
Son was born in Europe, and this is where the story ends. Spurs will now face it. Eintracht FrankfurtThe Champions LeagueGroup stage tonight (Tuesday), it is his return to German soil.
It was Frankfurt, in fact, that Son, Kim Minhyeok, and Kim Jongpil (now a defender for Korean second-tier side GyeongnamFC) flew from Seoul to, arriving as a group of callow teenagers in a totally foreign environment.
It can’t be overstated how challenging this was culturally and linguistically for the three youngsters.
Son became a great success after some hard times.
He had been 16 when he joined Hamburg, having been scouted by the club’s youth-team coach Soner Uysal and former player turned agent Thies Bliemeister, who went on to be the forward’s representative for more than a decade.
