Talking Tactics: Son Heung-Min isn’t scoring - but here’s how LAFC made him MLS’s most dangerous creator

Son's signing in August of last year was greeted with the kind of furor MLS seldom sees. Arguably, only David Beckham and Lionel Messi were more highly anticipated and more expertly marketed. There was a narrative that Son's acquisition was simply perfect for LAFC, both on and off the pitch. Los Angeles has a large Korean population. Son is the biggest Korean athlete in the world - and it's not particularly close.

The team itself also needed a boost on the pitch. There was room for another attacker. Someone who could pick a pass and bag double-digit goals over the course of a season would have done just fine, in truth. LAFC went out and bought a Premier League great - and one with plenty of football to play. There was quite literally nothing to dislike about the deal.

Son repaid the hype with a string of immense performances. He averaged over a goal contribution per game in the tail end of the MLS campaign, and showed flashes of a deadly partnership with Bouanga, a perfect hyper-athletic running mate on the left wing. He scored every type of goal imaginable - tap-ins, free kicks, winding runs complete with deadly finishes. Only Lionel Messi was a deadlier and more effective attacking presence as the season wound down.

Of course, it ended in cruel fashion. LAFC were dreadful in the first half of their Western Conference semifinal against Vancouver, then relentless in the second, piling up 34 shots and hitting the post three times. It still went to penalties. Son, so often decisive, clipped the post - a miss that summed up a night defined by fine margins more than any one moment.

It all seemed like a bit of a reset this offseason. It had been known, for some time, that former boss Steve Cherundolo would leave at the end of the campaign and return to his adopted nation of Germany. LAFC's manager hunt was a highly publicized thing. All sorts of names were tossed around - not least Son's previous manager Ange Postecoglou.

Eventually, they made the surprising - if admittedly logical - decision to promote assistant, Marc Dos Santos. In abstract, it made sense. Dos Santos has been a head coach before. The players knew him. He was no stranger to the egos, personalities and bravado of a locker room full of big names. But the new manager - despite being around from the old days - promised that they wouldn't be the same team.

LAFC, Dos Santos told GOAL, would be far more versatile on the ball. And off it, this would be a remarkably switchable team in attack, full of buzz and creativity, and complete with footballers who could drift across the front line. Son wouldn't be a focal point as much as the best Swiss Army Knife Major League Soccer could offer.

"So if I had this No. 9 whose best quality is to be fixed, I won't try to change his quality into something that is not right. But with players like Denis Bouanga or Sonny, you have the ability to be mobile," Dos Santos said.

And thus far, Dos Santos has been as good as his word. Look at teamsheets, or your standard match-to-match data, and Son is most often listed as a striker. But this is very much not a footballer leading the line, thriving off the shoulder of the last defender. Instead, Son has a license to roam. Sometimes he darts to the right. Other times, he drops deep and pings balls forward. He has even played with his back to defenders here and there. Against St. Louis CITY last month, Son started as a No. 10.

It's a surprising setup, not least because of Son's goalscoring chops. But it also makes plenty of sense. Bouanga is an immense talent, but he is also rather one-dimensional. The Gabonese goalscorer is an inverted winger who lives on the left channel. He is probably the best in MLS at doing the same thing, over and over. And it can't really be stopped. That Son has proved himself at a similar position could have been an inconvenience. Instead, LAFC adapt around it. That means multiple players have to make some sacrifices. Bouanga presses perhaps a little more than he is used to. Son runs in behind less.

The individual stats also make for fine reading. Bouanga's attacking numbers are more impressive than ever. He is in the 95th percentile among all forwards in touches in the opposition box. He's in the 94th percentile in shots per 90 minutes. The inverse is true for Son. He is touching the ball less in the opposition box, while his shot volume is down. But he leads MLS in big chances created per 90 minutes at seven, and is fourth in the league in overall chances created with 15.

Everything around them is clicking, too. Nathan Ordaz, a youngster out of the academy, has put in the hard yards. David Martinez has added goals to his game, and is third on the team in chances created.

Yet that does little to account for the "zero" on Son's goalscoring numbers. Some of these things are hard to quantify. Son's expected goals is at 1.9. He is getting off 3.3 shots per 90 minutes. His shots on target per 90 is a little low - just 0.55. Piece it all together, and 17 percent of his shots are on target.

And that's perhaps where the discrepancy lies. More than anything, Son is adept at putting the ball on frame. In the 2025 MLS campaign, 58 percent of his shots were on net. In the 2024-25 Premier League campaign, he put 46 percent of his efforts on goal - his lowest mark in the five years since FotMob began tracking that data.

There's maybe an element of randomness here, then. Perhaps this is a dry spell to the extreme. He still makes all of the right runs. All of the logical movements are here. He passes at the right time and is not particularly selfish on the ball, either. But body language experts might notice that there's a little frustration kicking in here and there - the odd shrug, gesture, or shout. This seems like a bit of a rut to start the season. And even if Son has declined rapidly, which would be remarkably unlikely, then a drop in numbers that extreme isn't statistically likely.

In other words, Son is in a cold spell.

Yet in all of that, one thing is clear: Son's lack of goals doesn't really matter at the moment. LAFC are top of the West. They have played six, won five, and tied one. Only one more team - the Vancouver Whitecaps - has scored more goals, and they have the best defensive record in the league as they've yet to concede a goal. There is a more basic, fundamental argument to be made here that soccer is simply a team sport, and if the team is winning, then does any of this count for much?

So, it becomes a question of systems. Are LAFC winning because of Son's new role, or despite it? Perhaps part of the reason LAFC have been so good is that Son has been such a willing adaptor. If he has to become creator-in-chief for LAFC to win, then surely that's a sacrifice he would be willing to make. And then, there's the thing that is perhaps lost in this whole thing: Son is a very, very, very good footballer, who will likely break out of this cold spell.

If he could continue to assist at the same clip, and add some inevitable goals to his game, a very good team will become much better. Son is thriving right now. The scary part? There's still more to come.