It’s time to stop treating Heung-Min Son like a victim

Following Andre Gomes’ horrific injury at the weekend, the attention of the footballing world has wrongly fallen towards Heung-Min Son instead.

Andre Gomes may never be the same footballer ever again – that’s the reality of suffering such a horrific injury. He will retain the same intelligence that a midfielder out of the Porto and Benfica academies will always possess, but he might struggle to make certain passes, turns, or touches for the rest of his career, because of what both Heung-Min Son and Serge Aurier did to him on the weekend, albeit by accident.

Of course, it’s easy to forgive the pair, since they would never, ever wish such horror upon a fellow professional and didn’t mean to do what they did. But does that mean we should be sympathizing with them the most and giving them more attention than the actual victim itself? Absolutely not.

Unfortunately, it seems that the footballing world forgot about Andre Gomes almost immediately after the final whistle blew in that 1-1 draw between Everton and Spurs. Since then, all the talk has been about Heung-Min Son, whose red card and suspension were both rescinded by the FA following an appeal.

Sure, you can feel sorry for Son, even if his challenge was malicious and had no intention of getting the ball. But he isn’t completely faultless, and for that alone, we should not be treating him like a baby, pandering to his emotions and praising his name, just because he didn’t mean for something so awful to happen. Many football fans have failed at realizing this simple concept over the last few days.

Instead of focusing on Son, whose footballing career will go on normally following a few days of emotional difficulty, we should be averting our attention towards Andre Gomes, a player who won’t get to play the beautiful game for at least a calendar year, and likely won’t be the same physically or mentally ever again.

https://twitter.com/brfootball/status/1192191280786358278

After scoring against Red Star in the Champions League on Wednesday, Son ran up to the camera and seemed to apologize, presumably for his part in the Andre Gomes injury. While it might seem like a nice gesture on the surface, there really was no need for Son to do this in front of a camera. A written apology, or a private phone call to Gomes would have sufficed – but apologizing to the cameras, in an unrelated match, in an unrelated competition, seems almost conceited and wrongfully aimed, like a PR stunt.

Son might very well be a kind man who feels devastated over what happened, but the best thing for him to do at this moment in time is play his football, have a personal chat with Andre Gomes whenever he gets the opportunity to, and keep a low profile. Not reiterate his remorse to football fans over and over again.