South Korea

Son Heung-Min (손흥민) has been making a name for himself in international soccer since he joined Tottenham Hotspur in 2015. And to acknowledge his achievements in recent seasons, we have put this article together to showcase his journey from South Korean youth soccer to the Premier League. Here is the general player profile of Heung-min Son, but to find out more about this key player, then keep on reading:

Hangul - 손흥민

DOB – 8^th July 1992

Height – 1.83m

Weight – 77kg

Nationality – South Korean

Current Club – Tottenham Hotspur

Signed – 28^th August 2015

Position – Forward

Heung-Min’s Youth Career

Born on the 8^th July 1992, Heung-min grew up with a considerable amount of football in his life. His father Son Woong-Jung is a retired football player that upon retirement became a football manager who also represented his country in the South Korean national team B during his prime.

With this large soccer influence surrounding his childhood, there was no doubt that Heung-Min was going to follow in his father’s footsteps and take up football. He attended the FC Seoul academy which was a considerable distance from his hometown. He then progressed throughout the academy and made an appearance for the FC Seoul team as a ball boy in a match during 2008.

According to his agent Thies Bilemeister, Son has always been keen to take his football career into Europe and is fluent in both German and English as well as his native language – Korean. So, when Son left the Dongbuk High School (FC Seoul U18 Team) to join Hamburger SV’s youth team as part of the Korean FA Youth Project, this was the start of his journey into European soccer. He only spent one year with the Hamburger SV junior team before returning to South Korea for the FIFA U17 World Cup. After this tournament had ended, he then formally joined Hamburger SV’s academy in 2009.

Son spent from 200

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is interesting: in terms of AFC 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification processes, the AFC qualifiers are nearly as large an undertaking as the UEFA qualifiers. For the 2018 World Cup qualifying competition, UEFA will have 52 teams battling across seven groups of six and two groups of five. AFC, meanwhile, currently has 39 teams competing throughout seven groups of five and one group of four. There would be 40 teams playing, but Indonesia are currently suspended from FIFA, and were therefore disqualified.

However, despite the comparable size of these divisions, there are 13 slots available in the final tournament for UEFA teams, and only 4.5 slots available for AFC teams. As a result, AFC qualification is a good deal more competitive and complicated than UEFA qualification, involving a longer process with numerous rounds. Needless to say, trying to predict which AFC teams will make it to the World Cup can be a challenging thing-particularly because no AFC team has ever won the prestigious soccer tournament. However, we are at least going to take a stab at trying to predict the outcome of the first round of the AFC qualification process, which is currently in progress.

Recent World Cup Entrants

Perhaps the best way to predict the likely outcome of the AFC qualifiers is to take a look at the AFC teams that were entrants in the past few World Cups. While the list of Asian teams that reach the World Cup tends to vary more than the list of UEFA teams, there is still value in recognizing which countries have played well in these qualifying stages within the past five or 10 years.

In 2014, AFC's four World Cup squads were Australia, Iran, Japan, and South Korea. In 2010, the

When the 2014 FIFA World Cup commences in Brazil this summer, it will officially be the 20^th time that such an event has taken place. Out of those 20 tournaments, the red, blue, and white colors of the South Korea soccer jersey have appeared eight times before, with the ninth to come this summer. And the South Korea national football team, which is still riding high off its unexpectedly strong finishes in the 2002 and 2010 World Cups, is hoping that nine will prove to be a lucky number.

Current FIFA world rankings have the South Korea team slotted at 55, meaning that no one really expects the team to make much of an impression in Brazil come this summer. That fact hasn't daunted fans of the Asian team, however, who are flocking to the Soccer Box online store to purchase items like the South Korea 2014 FIFA World Cup away jersey. The away shirt, a white jersey with bands of color on each sleeve one red and one blue was manufactured by Nike and boasts South Korea's distinctive tiger crest on the breast.

Group Stage Challenges

If the South Korea soccer jersey is going to make much of an impression on global football viewers this summer, then the team that wears it will have to battle its way out of the group stage. Luckily for fans of the team, South Korea's draw is likely one of the easier ones currently on the docket for the first stage of the World Cup.

In fact, none of the football teams in South Korea's group Group H, to be exact are currently ranked in the top 10 by FIFA. The biggest challenge South Korea will face in this stage is likely Belgium, a team which showed unexpected strength in the qualification stages and earned a ranking of 12 from FIFA as a result. However, both of the other teams in Group H Russia and Algeria are seeded above South Korea as well, meaning that the team will have its work cut out for it.

Fans hoping to cheer their South Korea team on in

Soccer is widely beloved and followed throughout Europe, but teams from Asia are not traditionally thought of as World Cup contenders in the same way that teams like Spain, Italy, and England are. The South Korea national football team is one of the most notable exceptions to this rule, a successful soccer team that has made numerous appearances in the FIFA World Cup, and one that even managed to make it to the semifinals in 2002. Given that the 2002 World Cup was held in South Korea (as well as in Japan), it wasn't surprising when the stands filled with fans wearing South Korea football shirts.

With the FIFA World Cup once again on its way for this summer, it's time for South Korea fans to once again stock up on team regalia. With the event to be held in Brazil, South Korea won't have the home field advantage that brought along its best finish in history at the 2002 World Cup. Nevertheless, wearing a South Korea World Cup home jersey 2014 in the stands at the Brazil cup could play a small role in pushing the team back to the semi-finals, and Soccer Box has plenty of those authentic Nike jerseys in stock in addition to numerous other pieces of South Korea gear to help push your team spirit to the next level.

South Korea to Represent Asian Football Confederation in Brazil

When the South Korea national football team takes the field for its games at the forthcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, players and fans wearing South Korea football shirts will be doing so as one of only four teams in the tournament from the ACF (Asian Football Confederation). In addition to South Korea, the ACF will be represented by national soccer teams from Australia, Japan, and Iran.

Of the teams that have qualified from the Asian conference, none are currently considered to be strong contenders for the World Cup title. In FIFA's last ranking of the soccer teams around the world (which was compiled in October