Son Heung-min named top Asian int’l player for record 4th time

South Korean superstar Son Heung-min was named the top Asian footballer performing outside the continent for a record fourth time Tuesday.

Son was announced as the winner of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian International Player of the Year honor during the AFC Annual Awards ceremony at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

The award recognizes Asian players’ performances outside the continent from the latter part of 2023 and the first half of 2024. Son, captain for Tottenham Hotspur and for the South Korean national team, previously won this award in 2015, 2017 and 2019.

No other player has picked up the prize more than once.

During the 2023-24 Premier League season, Son became the sixth player to reach the 150-goal mark for Spurs in September last year and then netted his 200th European goal the following month. In December, he became Spurs’ all-time Premier League assists leader. He tallied 17 goals and 10 assists in 36 matches last season.

For the national team, Son led South Korea to the semifinals of the AFC Asian Cup in Qatar in February and scored in five of South Korea’s six matches in the second round of the Asian World Cup qualification tournament between November 2023 and June 2024.

The only other South Korean winner on Tuesday was Park Youn-jeong, the AFC Women’s Coach of the Year. The 35-year-old is the second South Korean winner of this prize.

In November 2023, Park became the youngest person to become head coach of any South Korean national team when she was put in charge of the women’s under-20 squad. South Korea won her first two matches.

The former center back began coaching at the national level with the U-17 women’s team in 2019 and moved up to the U-20s in 2022. She was on the backroom staff at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup that same year and returned to the 2024 tournament as head coach.

South Korean players were nominated for the top individual awards but came away empty-handed. Veteran defender Kim Hye-ri lost out to Kiko Seike of Japan for the AFC Women’s Player of the Year award, and fullback Seol Young-woo came up short against Akram Afif of Qatar for the AFC Men’s Player of the Year prize.