When Dreams Take Root in the Longest Wait
There’s something about pain that binds football fans. Something in the long, hard years without silverware that forges a different kind of loyalty, one not built on trophies or the glitter of success but on quiet belief.
I should know — I became a Liverpool supporter in 1990, the year the league titles stopped coming. For thirty long years, we waited. Through managerial changes, near-misses, last-day heartbreaks, and Gerrard’s slip that broke all our hearts, we waited. And so, when someone like Son Heung-min wins the UEFA Europa League with Tottenham Hotspur — a club whose trophy cabinet has long gathered dust — I don’t just celebrate for him. I feel it with him. Because I know what it means to carry the weight of belief for far too long.
To call Son Heung-min a footballer is to miss the heart of who he is. Son is not just a player who scores goals — though he does that with beauty and ruthlessness — he’s an emblem of what loyalty, humility, and passion look like when a career is built not for headlines but for heart.
Grew up in Chuncheon, South Korea, in a household led by a father who trained him not just to be a footballer, but a disciplined, humble, and mentally unbreakable human being. His father, a former player himself, famously made Son juggle a ball for hours on end and forbade him from playing full-sided matches until he had the fundamentals down to muscle memory.
This was not the privileged life of an overhyped academy star being groomed for glory. This was a boy pushed to exhaustion by love and belief.
When Son left home to chase his dream in Europe, there were no guarantees. No red carpet. No legacy name to ride on. Just pure determination.
So when people speak about loyalty in football, usually in the same breath as Gerrard or Totti, they rarely mention Son. Maybe it’s because his story unfolds not in grand declarations but in silent persistence. But make no mistake: Son’s loyalty — to Tottenham, to the fans, and to his childhood dream — is as pure and as rare as anything the sport has seen.
Being a Tottenham player over the past decade has often meant being part of football’s most heartbreaking ensemble cast.
The club has flirted with greatness, even kissed its cheek now and then, only to see it walk away with someone else. There was the 2016-17 Premier League campaign, where they finished second to a Conte-led Chelsea. There was the 2018-19 Champions League final, where Spurs, against all odds, fought their way past Manchester City and Ajax — one of the most thrilling semi-final moments I’ve witnessed as a neutral — only to fall to Liverpool in Madrid.
I remember that night.
As a Liverpool fan, I should have been consumed by joy. And I was. But I also remember Son walking off that pitch. Head bowed. A man who had given everything, who had fought through the fire only to find ash at the summit. It didn’t feel like vanquishing a rival. It felt like breaking someone’s heart.
Tottenham’s run that season was no fluke. And Son was instrumental in it. His goals against City were not just goals—they were cannon blasts of defiance. But more than his football, it was his attitude that shone. He didn’t complain. Didn’t curse fate. He simply picked himself up and kept running.
What breaks me the most is knowing what Son has had to endure during these years — not just the defeats, but the scapegoating. Too often in the harsh theater of English football, a player who stays loyal through turbulent seasons becomes a soft target.
Son’s smile, his humility, his reluctance to play the media game — these became, for some, signs of weakness.
How many times did he have to shoulder the weight for a team that didn’t match his ambition? How often did his world-class contributions get overshadowed by managerial failures, boardroom turmoil, or star players treating the club like a stepping stone? For every goal he scored, there was another game where his work ethic was all but invisible to those with eyes only for drama.
Yet, Son never lashed out. Never put in a transfer request. Never leaked stories to the media. Never once treated Tottenham like it was beneath him.
Do you know how rare that is?
There’s a quote from Son I’ve always held close: “I don’t play for money or fame. I play because I love football.” In a time when loyalty in football is often performative, Son’s love for the game has always been unflinchingly sincere. He never allowed the bleak seasons to turn him bitter. In fact, when Spurs lost the Carabao Cup final in 2021, the cameras caught him crying on the pitch. Not out of embarrassment — but out of heartbreak. He wasn’t supposed to care that much. But he did.
And that’s why this season — finally — after years of heartbreak, of being the bridesmaid never the bride, of watching friends and foes lift trophies he could only dream of — he led Tottenham to the Europa League title. Not as a side character. But as the captain. The soul.
And I wept. I wept not just for him, but with him.
Supporting Liverpool during the 30-year drought taught me something: winning is not the reward. Believing is. Believing when there’s no reason to. Believing when the world mocks you. Believing when even your own fans are too tired to chant.
In Son, I see that belief lived out. In him, I see the same long wait, the same hunger, the same refusal to give up. He is, in many ways, a mirror of every loyal football supporter. And that’s why even though I have never worn a Tottenham jersey, I rejoiced like a lifelong Spurs fan when Son lifted that trophy.
It was never just about winning the Europa League. It was about proving that kindness, humility, and belief can still matter in football. That you don’t have to be arrogant or controversial or controversial to be legendary. You just have to be true to yourself and to the game.
There’s something poetic about Son lifting his first major European trophy not in a team stacked with global superstars, but with the very club he’s stayed loyal to for almost a decade. He didn’t chase the trophies. He stayed and built toward one. Brick by brick. Defeat by defeat. Season after season.
It was his armband that led the team out that night. His energy that ignited the attack. His tears that flowed when the final whistle blew. And for once, they were tears of joy.
Son is not flashy. He’s not a marketing machine. He’s not draped in ego. He is football as it should be—played with joy, carried with humility, and lived with loyalty.
When Liverpool finally won the Premier League in 2020, I stood in my living room and cried. Not just because we had won, but because we had endured. Every season of mockery, every moment we almost touched it and let it slip away — it all led to that night.
Now I see Son and Spurs fans living that moment. And from the bottom of my scarred but stubborn supporter heart, I want to say: Welcome. Welcome to the joy that only long suffering can earn. Welcome to the peace of knowing that staying true finally paid off.
Son Heung-min is more than a champion. He is proof that football still rewards those who believe in the right things. And if you’ve ever spent seasons shouting into the void, praying for a miracle, convincing yourself that next year will be different —then you’ll understand why this win means everything.
Because in the end, it’s not just the trophy that makes you a legend.
It’s the journey.
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