“I remember going to see a game in Seoul when Park was playing for Manchester United,” said Lim Hyun-joo, a senior lecturer in sociology at Bournemouth University. “Park was seen as a good player in England, but in many ways he was invisible. I was shocked by the reception in Korea: all the people went crazy for him. It was a complete contrast.”

Park spent seven years at Old Trafford, and was held in high esteem both by fans and by his manager, Alex Ferguson, who regularly called on him in the highest-profile games. Park’s virtues were not necessarily related to his talents, though: he was cherished for his industry, his energy, his discipline. He would often be tasked with man-marking the opposition’s biggest threat.

It was a case study of how Europe views Asian players: they might sell jerseys and tickets and sponsorship deals off the field, but on it, they are — first and foremost — good workers.

When Son signed for Tottenham, in 2016 — the same year LG ended its sponsorship deal with Leverkusen — he described his style of play as “bold and daring.” His agent, Thies Bliemeister, recalled visiting him as a teenager at Hamburg, and being impressed that he was “never inside, playing PlayStation with the other guys: he was always outside, practicing, learning.” Schmidt said Son would spend hours alone on the training ground, refining his shooting, perfecting his accuracy with either foot, first from inside the box and then just outside, over and over.

And yet, for a long time, what people — even those who worked with him closely — noticed about Son was how hard he worked. “He is indefatigable,” Pochettino said of him this season. He compared him to the Energizer bunny: “He never gives up. He tries, he tries again and again.”

To Lim, there is a resonance in the way Europe treats its Asian soccer players with the way the United States has sometimes viewed its Asian immigrant communities. “It is the idea of the model minority,” she said. “The coverage of Son that I’ve read has focused a lot on his hard work, his discipline, his filial piety.