Twelve consecutive World Cup starts. That was the record Son Heung-min carried into Wednesday night’s Group A decider at Estadio BBVA in Monterrey — and it was the record South Korea coach Hong Myung-bo chose to end in a must-win game. It did not go well.
South Africa beat South Korea 1-0 to reach the knockout round of the World Cup for the first time in their history. South Korea are out unless they survive as one of the eight best third-place finishers across all groups — a result that is now entirely out of their hands.
Hong’s decision to bench his captain and most experienced attacker stunned almost everyone who saw the team sheet. Son, 33, had started every World Cup match South Korea had played since 2014. He was fully fit. His form had been poor — zero shots on target against Mexico in Game 2, substituted at the 57th minute — but sitting him in a game South Korea needed to win was a gamble very few coaches would have taken.
The reasoning Hong offered afterward made it stranger still. “We thought that Son would be better placed when the opponents were losing their energy,” the coach said, “not when they had a lot of energy.” But Son came on at the start of the second half — precisely when South Africa had just had a 15-minute rest. The logic and the decision did not match.
What happened on the pitch reflected the confusion. Oh Hyeon-gyu started in Son’s place up front but offered little. Kim Min-jae — the Bayern Munich defender — nearly gave South Korea the lead inside two minutes when his header from a corner was cleared off the line, but that was as close as they came to breaking through. Son, when he did enter, made no visible difference in an attack that had no answers for South Africa all night.
The only goal arrived in the 63rd minute and came from an unlikely source. Substitute Tshepang Moremi, on the field for barely a minute, drove down the left and pulled a low ball back to Thapelo Maseko at the edge of the box. Maseko’s first touch took it away from defender Jens Castrop, and he drove a left-footed finish into the bottom corner past the helpless goalkeeper.
For South Africa, the moment was historic. They had appeared at three previous World Cups — 1998, 2002, and as hosts in 2010 — and had never once made it past the group stage. Not even on home soil. Wednesday night in Monterrey ended that. They face Canada on Sunday in Inglewood, California, for a place in the last 16.
South Korea, meanwhile, are left to wait. They finish third in Group A with three points and a goal difference that will be measured against all the other third-place finishers across the tournament’s eight groups. Eight of them advance. Whether South Korea are among those eight is a question only other results can answer.
The personal stakes add another layer for Son. This is his fourth World Cup. At 33, it is almost certainly his last. He has 56 international goals — two away from breaking Cha Bum-kun’s all-time South Korean record of 58. He scored neither of them this week.
Hong, who admitted Wednesday was their “worst game” of the tournament, was also in charge when South Korea failed to win a single match at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The decisions and the results are beginning to form a pattern that will be difficult for him to argue against when he returns home.
