Son Heung-Min Injury, Teammates’ Poor Form Mean South Korea Have A Striker Crisis Ahead Of World Cup

South Korean soccer fans will be holding their breath as star striker Son Heung-min could miss the Qatar 2022 World Cup.

The Tottenham Hotspur star needs surgery on a fracture near his eye socket. He was injured in a collision in the UEFA Champions League match against Marseille earlier this week.

The injury adds to South Korea head coach Paulo Bento’s attacking problems. Bento’s preferred front-three of Son, Hwang Hee-chan and Hwang Ui-jo have been woefully off form this season.

Had the upcoming World Cup taken place in the summer of 2022 as originally scheduled, South Korea would’ve come into the tournament with a strikeforce containing the Premier League’s joint top scorer, a player with one goal every three games in Ligue 1, and another who had his best season in a top league of his career.

South Korea now arguably have none of those.

Their first game against Uruguay is on the 24th November, which gives Son Heung-min just three weeks to recover from his injury. Manchester City midfielder Kevin De Bruyne recovered from a similar injury in 19 days to play for Belgium at Euro 2020, but the timescale is extremely tight.

Even if Son Heung-min’s injury doesn’t keep him out of the World Cup, he will have to deal with playing with a protective mask, and will likely miss training sessions with South Korea.

He’s already struggling this season to match the heights of his previous season at Tottenham Hotspur. He’s scored just five goals in all competitions for Spurs in 2022/23. His form for the national team recently though is fantastic and he’s scored nine goals in his last 14 national team games.

South Korea’s other first-choice forwards, Hwang Ui-jo and Hwang Hee-chan, will need to step up in Son’s absence, but they are currently having awful seasons.

Hwang Ui-jo’s form for Bordeaux in Ligue 1 over the 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons, where he scored 12 and 11 goals, respectively, attracted the interest of several Premier League sides. The only side that stumped up the cash though was Nottingham Forest who immediately loaned him to Greek side Olympiacos, who share the same owner.

Olympiacos’ form this season has been so bad they have already sacked two head coaches, and Hwang has been unable to make an impact, with zero goals and just one assist in all competitions. Olympiacos brought in several new players including striker Cedric Bakambu and are now reportedly considering cutting Hwang’s loan short.

That could leave Hwang Ui-jo stuck with Nottingham Forest’s under-23s. Hwang played 20 minutes for Bordeaux earlier this season, which according to FIFA rules would mean he is unable to play for another club, apart from perhaps one in Korea or Japan that runs on a spring-to-autumn schedule.

Hwang Hee-chan started his time at Molineux on great form, scoring four goals in his first six Premier League games for Wolverhampton Wanderers. The goals dried up toward the end of last season though. This season, he has struggled to even get off the bench, playing just 109 minutes of Premier League soccer since mid-August.

South Korea play a friendly against Iceland next week without their European-based players. Given the poor form of their strikers and Son’s injury, that friendly could have added importance, as the domestic-based forwards might now have a larger role to play in South Korea’s World Cup campaign.