Insider: Alarm bells ringing for Tottenham as embarrassing Heung-min Son details emerge
Tottenham attacker Heung-min Son’s “performance metrics” are down at the World Cup as he feels the effects of his facial injury.
That is the view of medical expert Ben Dinnery, who runs the Premier Injuries site and has a background in injury and data analysis, speaking exclusively to Football Insider.
Son has worn a face mask in all of South Korea’s World Cup games but has not had a major impact on the tournament.
The 30-year-old underwent surgery on a fracture around his eye just weeks before the tournament.
“The impact all comes down to the individual first and foremost but it’s not ideal,” Dinnery told Football Insider‘s Connor Whitley.
“You need to understand that Heung-min Son will be training day in, day out with the protective face mask on so there will be a period of adaptation.
“Once you are into the cut and thrust and cross that white line it shouldn’t play too much of a part.
“Have we seen South Korea and Heung-min Son light up this tournament? Certainly not, particularly when you look at some of the performance metrics you’d expect to see from Son, a player who would drag that team and lead that team.
“In terms of distance covered, he’s fairly down on his teammates, also in terms of those high-intensity sprints, those lung-bursting runs, again, he’s still a little bit down to where we’d expect him to be.
“That could be a little bit of caution, psychologically going out on the field with the protective mask and having undergone surgery.
“Ideally, would he be out there if this wasn’t a World Cup finals? Potentially not but the decision was made and he was prepared to take that risk.
“The number of tackles are down too. He’s tended to play more on the fringes of the game rather than the main focal point of that team and the star man.”
In other news, a young Tottenham attacker has arrived at his new club after being told to leave.