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| Football coach Son Woong-jung, who is also the father of Tottenham Hotspur striker Son Heung-min, stands with a football at Son Football Academy in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, July 11. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk |
'Tiger dad' Son Woong-jung passes down secret recipe for success to next-generation athletes
By Lee Hae-rin
CHUNCHEON ― Keenly watching 11 young athletes dribbling on the pitch with his piercing eyes, Son Woong-jung, 60, the father of English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur striker Son Heung-min, shouts, "Stay focused! Don't be distracted! Don't let the ball fall!"
His thunder-like voice splits the air over the football field. The teenagers listen intently to what he says and concentrate on handling the ball with their heads and feet, just like Son Heung-min must have done at their age with his father.
The charismatic coach stands with a cold, strict look on his face and both his hands on his waist while the teens bounce footballs for over 20 minutes in unison. He does not miss a single mistake among the aspiring young athletes and his voice echoes back from the mountain from time to time.
"You look like you don't want to play football, right? Or is it because you don't want to be here?" Son says to one of the teens, looking him in the eyes. He asks if the boy wanted to go home. "We are all here to be happy, to play football on the field."
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| Son Woong-jung watches over 11 young athletes as they practice lifting the ball. Trainees at Son's academy are to master all of the basics of ball control and are not allowed to shoot until they turn 15, just as Son Heung-min did. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk |
His "tough love" for the next generation of athletes ends with him hugging each and every boy after practice. He is straightforward and strict, but also warmhearted. Plus he is serious about football ― and the future of the young athletes.
The older Son is shy of the media spotlight.
Few people know that he is eloquent and great at details, maybe because his interviews with the media are rare. What he said not only made sense, but was also thought-provoking.
Like his famous son, the older Son was a football player when he was young. Born into a poor family in the rural county of Seosan in South Chungcheong Province, he said he has been passionate about football since he was a kid and moved to Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, to attend a middle school there that had a great football team. His career as a footballer, however, ended abruptly as he retired when he was only 28 due to an Achilles tendon injury.
He is humble enough to say that, as a footballer, he was "awful."
"I was a terrible player… Someone once said I was a third- or fourth-tier player, which I think is an accurate description of me as a football player," the older Son said during an exclusive interview with The Korea Times in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province on July 11.
This third-tier footballer, however, trained his son to become one of the greatest Korean footballers of all time. The younger Son became the first Asian football star to win the English Premier League Golden Boot Award in May.
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| Son Heung-min of Tottenham Hotspur celebrates after scoring his team's fourth goal during a match with Team K League at Seoul World Cup Stadium, June 13. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk |
The older Son disagreed about the description that his son is "world-class," noting that Heung-min still has a long way to go and encouraged him to stay humble and keep working hard to improve his performance.
Asked about the secret of training his son to be one of the highest-performing players in the Premier League, he said he used to tell his two sons ― Heung-min is his younger son ― again and again that in football, the ball has the secret.
"Football is all about the ball. So, athletes should learn how to handle the ball from the time they start playing football," he said.
He compared practicing with a ball to putting together puzzles.
"Let's suppose there is a brand-new, sophisticated puzzle and you give it to a second or third grader and another to an adult in order to see who can do it faster. Chances are that the child can master how to do it within a day or two but the adult cannot even if they are given a week," he said, underscoring the importance of building solid basic skills during one's childhood years.
Besides early football education, the older Son also underscores the importance of practicing.
"You keep playing with the ball again and again, so that you can become familiar with it and know it all too well. I used to tell my children that practice is the greatest teacher," he said.
His well-known rigorous training of his son earned him the nickname "tiger dad."
But to his son, he is much more than a strict parent. He is a life coach, and also a source of inspiration to keep his son improving his skills, not being content with his past successes. To keep nurturing his son, the older Son reads a lot. He is an avid reader of books of all genres. He keeps thinking about football, too. Whenever great ideas come to him at night, he wakes up right away and writes them down.
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| Tottenham Hotspur Son Heung-min, right, and Harry Kane give each other a hug during a match with Team K League. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk |
Some Tottenham fans recognized the older Son's role behind his son's phenomenal success in the Premier League. The column, "Daniel Levy should sign Son Heung-min's dad," written by Avery Farmer in 2018 for SB Nation, an online community for Tottenham fans, read as follows:
"Son Woong-jung clearly has a talent for coaching and if his academy continues to run as smoothly as it is right now, I hope he finds bigger and better player-development opportunities to work on."
The younger Son admitted that his father is a true mentor inseparable from his football career. In an interview with a local media, he said, "My football is entirely the work of my father."
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| In this photo taken with a drone, Son Woong-jung poses for a shot on the field at the Son Football Academy. Before becoming a football coach to his son, Son Heung-min, Son had been a professional player and retired early due to an Achilles tendon injury at the age of 28. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk |
Like father, like son
Son Heung-min was a third grader when he first told his father he wanted to become a professional football player. His father didn't want his son to live the life of a football player because his memory of the sport was traumatic.
But the father soon realized that his son's enthusiasm for football wasn't something he could stop.
"We were living in a very difficult situation when my son said he wanted to become an athlete," Son said, "I was at my worst economically. And Chuncheon is surrounded by mountains, so there was a lot of snow and cold wind during winter. Those years were very difficult."
After his early retirement, the older Son had to juggle several jobs to make a living for his family. From a day laborer on construction sites to a fitness trainer at a community center gym, Son did whatever it takes to make ends meet as the breadwinner in the family.
The older Son has also been a dedicated father.
To give the best to his son from what they had, Son would wake up early in the morning to pick up all the little stones from the school playground so that his boy wouldn't get hurt when falling. Also, he poured over 100 bags of salt to keep the soil of his son's school field ― where they held daily practice back then ― dry in summer and unfrozen in winter. On snowy days, he shoveled snow with a wooden plow to secure a corner that was big enough for his son to dribble and work out in.
One of Son's acclaimed training methods is running three laps while keeping the ball in the air ― first with the right foot, next with the left and last alternating left and right, without letting it touch the ground. If the ball falls, Son was to go back and start all over again, no matter how close he was to the finish line.
By the time Son had joined the junior football team and had his first match with his peers at the age of 16, his training time spent on mastering ball control had amounted to a total of 5,110 hours.
In his recently published memoir, titled, "Everything Begins from the Basics," the older Son said bamboo takes at least five years to take root deep in the ground before spreading its trunk and leaves upward. Likewise, he believes that an athlete needs long years of basic training to grow strong, like bamboo that can stand upright through a harsh weather.
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| Son Woong-jung passes a ball to a young athlete while training at the Son Football Academy. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk |
Korean football
Son is one of the football experts who deeply regrets the way athletes are trained and consumed.
He pointed out that Korea's ineffective junior education system pushes young players to extreme competition, but that such hard work doesn't produce results.
Despite the nation's craze for football, Korean football remains "obscure," if not non-existent, globally.
"Garbage in, garbage out. To make a change in the output, one must change the input," Son said bluntly. "It's that simple."
He said that the most deep-rooted problem affecting Korean football is in the youth football system that values results, while turning a blind eye to the process: team scores at local tournaments over players' health and careers. From his experience as a young trainee and as a professional player, Son said he has witnessed and experienced the systemic irregularities faced by the young players.
"These players are pushed into fierce competition, pushing their bodies to the limit. They end up becoming too prematurely burnt out for their age and have to end their careers even before reaching their prime," Son said. "I think that's the biggest problem."
Instead, Son said that the country must see the juvenile players' futures from diverse angles in the long run, from 10 to even 15 years and invest in their futures.
He said that's why he kept his son away from the football scene for seven years. There was no reason for him to be hasty, as he prioritized securing time to concentrate on oneself and mastering the basics over game experience and camp training.
If the juvenile player education system changes, the older Son believes the future of Korean football could also change. If the sports authorities gain a long-term view and invest more in young players' future careers, "Reaching the round of 16 at the World Cup might not be such a huge challenge in 15 years."
As he wrote in his book, Son believes there is no such thing as failure for children, but that there is only experience. "We need to invest more time," Son said.
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| This aerial photo of the Son Football Academy shows Son Woong-jung and his young athletes training on two junior football fields. The 66,000-square-meter academy opened last October and has three football fields, two futsal fields, a domed stadium and an indoor clubhouse. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk |
Next-generation athletes
The older Son is now passing on his knowhow and expertise in early football education to aspiring football players in his academy.
In October 2021, the Son Football Academy opened in the mountainous locale of Chuncheon. Chuncheon is where the older Son came by himself at the age of 14 to learn football, as well as the hometown of the Tottenham striker.
The 66,000-square-meter football academy is a utopia for aspiring young players, as well as a collection of thoughts and lessons remaining from the older Son's entire life as a footballer ― as a juvenile player, a professional athlete and a football coach to his son. While living in Germany and in the United Kingdom to support his son's athletic career, he said he studied how and where youth football education takes place and took notes on the ideas.
The academy has three football fields ― one for a standard adult match and two for junior matches. A domed stadium provides an indoor space for practice on cold, snowy or rainy days, and two futsal fields are where Son teaches sophisticated footballing techniques and skills.
"Here, children can save some energy and stamina and concentrate on learning techniques, as they don't need to run around to pick up the ball," Son said, pointing to the futsal field. The field also has a sprinkler system that helps cool down young athletes on hot summer days.
Apart from the football fields, the institute has rooms for theory and strategy education, a fitness center and a rest area.
Son believes a good football field is like a safe and solid home for athletes.
"I hope this place contributes to young athletes becoming great players in the future," Son said.
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| Son Woong-jung ties his shoelace before a training session with 11 young athletes begins at the Son Football Academy. Three of Son's recent graduates have made it to the youth league in Europe ― two in Paderborn and one in St. Pauli. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk |
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