Newcash United (Seoul) 03.08.2025

The last game of our Asia tour saw players swapped around due to tiredness and to give other squad members time out on the grass.  The one big selection was Heung-Min Son, who captained his club in the stadium where he plays for his country.  Spurs were wearing their all black away kit, with Newcash clad in a Saudi Arabia inspired green and white outfit.

A third minute corner from Mathys Tel on the right wing bobbled into the box low, but went through to Pape Matar Sarr just outside the box in a central position and his shot into the ground forced Pope into punching it away.  Rodrigo Bentancur dragged his shot wide of the post in the follow up.  When Newcash attempted to play the ball out from the back, Kevin Danso pushed up halfway into their half to win the ball off Murphy and it ran on to Brennan Johnson, who stepped forward and drilled a low right foot shot into the net past Pope’s dive to his right.  It was a fast start with the goal coming just into the fourth minute and will we see the early goals that Thomas Frank’s Brentford transferred to our team ?

Most of the crowd got excited in the eighth minute, when Pedro Porro’s long ball aimed at Son ended with him unable to lift it over Pope but he was flagged offside anyway.  The aggressive closing down was making it hard for Newcash to move the ball forward and out of possession, Tottenham dropped eleven men back behind the ball.

With a quarter of an hour gone, Gordon got to the dead ball line behind Danso and his waist-high cross was just missed by Joelinton and then Scahr smashed a shot at goal, but off target.  Murphy was then freed on the right wing and his pull back went just wide of the near post with Gordon’s shot taking a touch for a corner.  A clearance from a cross following the corner looked as though Targett had the situation under control, but Tel hassled him and had a clear run on goal as the full back hit the floor.  He only had Pope to beat, but his shot was blocked by the keeper’s leg to deny Spurs a second goal, although, to be fair, it looked like it might have been a foul if it had gone to VAR in a competitive match.

Halfway through the first half Guimaraes crossed from the right and Joelinton was unmarked, but put his header wide of the far post.  In the next Spurs move, the ball was worked nicely to Gray in space on the left and he pulled the ball back into the area for Sarr, but he couldn’t get the ball out of his feet and it was cleared, but was played back towards Archie, who suffered a clash of head with former Tottenham right-back Trippier as both were treated during the cooling break.  Straight after play resumed, Newcash were careless in possession, handing the ball to Brennan and with Sonny in space to his left, the ball was poorly played behind the Tottenham captain.

Archie Gray was enjoying playing in his more accustomed midfield position and he made a driving run before taking a return pass from Johnson inside the box.  it was then played across the pitch to Son, whose ball behind the defender picked out Sarr and a corner was won.  Nothing resulted from that but when Trippier was booked for dragging Sonny down on the half hour, Porro struck the free-kick from 25 yards out fiercely, making Pope tip it over the bar.  The corner was played short and won another with a cross to the far post and that one didn’t produce much.  When Sarr and Bentancur broke up a Magpies attack, Porro than played a fantastic 50 yard pass across the pitch to Son, who ran at the defence and had a shot blocked before Spurs recycled the ball and the skipper played Gray into the left side of box, with his shot blocked.

Newcash equalised after 37 minutes when Gordon played the ball left to Barnes and he came inside Porro to thump a shot in at Kinsky’s near post with great power.  This brought some chants of “Geordies” with it being the first time anything was heard from them in the ground, even though it was odd to hear it with a Korean accent.  They got excited again a couple of minutes later when Guimaraes made a forward run with the ball laid to Barnes in the same position from where he scored, but this time Porro blocked his shot.  Meanwhile, off the ball, Guimaraes and Romero were having a go at each other, with the Newcash captain putting his hands around Cristian’s neck.  Lucky it was a friendly, as they could both have been sent off otherwise. 

Another clash of heads, this time between Bentancur and Joelinton left both players grounded in the middle of the Spurs penalty area while the referee allowed play to continue until Miley put a shot wide of the goal.  An added time ball over Gray’s head allowed Murphy to get in on the right, but his attempt to lob Kinsky was weak and Toni took it easily.

After a K-pop performance at half-time from 2NE1 and Spurs substitutions of Bergvall for Bentancur, Spence for Porro and Micky van de Ven for Romero, Gordon came close five minutes after the restart, with a poked shot going a foot wide and then in the 54th minute, he found the net, but was ahead of the last defender to volley Murphy’s cross home.  This came just after Guimaraes had gone down off the ball, with his foot slipping away from him as he tried to move away from Pape.  Then Joelinton threw an elbow into Archie Gary’s face without any action being taken by the soft Korean referee, who let Schar get away with a challenge from behind on Mathys, that left him holding his foot.

In the 65th minute, the moment finally came for Heung-Min Son to leave the pitch through a guard of honour of both teams that gave him pats on the back before he was overwhelmed with hugs from the Spurs subs.  His performance in the game might well have been affected the emotion of the days leading up to this match, but he left the pitch with a smile as his father looked sternly down from the stands.   With So’s exit and a cooling break, the game took a bit of a lull until the 72nd minute, when Spurs on the ball high up and Bergvall had a low shot from just outside the box but Pope got down behind it.  Then Kudus beat Livramento close to the dead-ball line, but his low cross was blocked at the near post.  

With the raft of substitutions came the game dying a little, with the high point being Richarlison hilariously pulling Pope’s shirt as he looked to distribute the ball, but the ref didn’t see the funny side and booked him for it.  It was a joke compared to what he let Newcash get away with, implying that a shirt pull is more worthy of a booking than an elbow in the face.  Not so humorous was James Maddison’s 12 minute cameo that was ended when he ran to close a Newcastle player and pulled up, falling to the ground looking in real pain.  After treatment, he had to be stretchered off and it didn’t look good with the league season just two weeks away.

Having come off the bench as a substitute for Madders, Yang Min-Hyeok was put away and took the ball a little too wide to the left, having to cut back inside where he got muscled out of it.  Bergvall put in a couple of dangerous crosses and Guimaraes curled a shot well wide before the game came to a tame end.

So, Spurs conceded their first goal of pre-season and you could see how annoyed they were about it, which was good to see.  The team worked hard in very humid conditions to close down the space for Newcash to play in, but also to get those turnovers high up the pitch that then suddenly turn into attacks.  It worked a treat for the opening goal that Johnson finished well after Kevin Danso had won the ball, even if it deflect off Burn.  Their goal could have been prevented.  Guimaraes ran a long way with the ball without a challenge and Porro allowed Barnes to find the room to drive the ball in at the near post.

There was also some indication that we will be quicker on the break than last season.  It appeared that we were not afraid to use the long ball, even without Solanke as a target man, so moving it from back to front more rapidly could catch sides out who have over-loaded in attack.  It offers a different option to try and break teams down.  And we might need alternative ways of creating chances if James Maddison’s knee injury is as bad as it appears to be.

The game had periods of supremacy for each side, with Spurs having more dangerous situations, while defending well as they did against Woolwich to prevent shots on goal.  The discipline to get back behind the ball to make it hard for the opposition to create chances was strong and it was good to see the players exercising controlled aggression in challenging the opposition, putting a doubt in their mind every time they received the ball.   

But in the end the day belonged to Son.  It may be his final match for Spurs after ten years and he will be missed, but after such great service to the club, he has earned the right to make his own decision over his future.  The moves that he had repeated so often for the team weren’t quite there today and maybe his decision is to go out as a champion after Bilbao.  He is a club legend and will be remembered for so many magic moments in a Spurs shirt.  A goal today would have been the icing on the cake, but it wasn’t to be.  Seoul and Spurs fans will always remember him.

• The numbers on the rear of Tottenham’s shirts were designed by Jaehoon Choi, based on the ‘Taegeuk’ Yin-Yang motif on the South Korea national flag.  The shirts did not carry the players’ names on the back.
• South Korean actor Park Seo-Joon made a ceremonial kick-off.  He gave a speech in praise of Heung-Min Son saying that his fans in Korean had sleepless nights due to the 8 hour time difference meaning a night-time kick off there for most Tottenham matches.
• Half-time performance by K-Pop band 2NE1.