Speaking on the What the Footie Podcast, David Webb has been chatting about Tottenham Hotspur’s Heung-Min Son.
Webb is currently the Head of Football Operations at Huddersfield Town, but he was formerly the Head of Elite Potential Identification at Spurs, and one player he picked out early on during his time at Spurs was Son.
Webb claims that Son was far from the finished product when he first picked him out, but he states that he’s now become a world-class footballer.
What’s been said about Son?
The transfer chief gave his view on Son.
“We didn’t have the budget of a Man City or Chelsea, Man United or Liverpool for example, so what we wanted to find was the level underneath. Son ticked that box straight away. He ticked the box for physical attributes which he would need to play in the gegenpress style that Mauricio played. He had to have those attributes, he had clever movement in attacking areas. He was nowhere near the finished article, but he had good technical ability. He was sharp and he was intelligent, while he had a phenomenal workrate as well,” Webb said.
“All of those ingredients meant that he was in our remit and we could acquire a player like that, but we also understood that he would need time to adapt, which it did, it took him five or six months to really get into the flow of the Premier League and the culture of Tottenham. It’s about spotting talents in their purest form, Son was just at that right time where he was ready for a new talent to develop. If you’re in that position where you can develop that talent, whether it’s a first-team or a youth talent, and Son is now a world-class player, those environments help to shape them to who they are now.”
Job well done
If Webb’s job was to identify players with elite potential, then he’s done brilliantly with Son.
As he says, the South Korean wasn’t the finished product when he arrived at Spurs – he scored just four Premier League goals in his first season, but since then, he hasn’t looked back.
Indeed, he’s gone from strength to strength since that first season, hitting double figures in terms of Premier League goals every year since.
Son is truly a world-class talent these days.
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