Son Heung Min‘s transfer to Bayer Leverkusen was buoyed by high expectations. He did not disappoint, and to top off an excellent day Saturday at the start of the Bundesliga season, Son also scored his first goal for his club. Well, not technically his first, he scored several times already in preseason and registered one in Cup competition already for Bayer. This goal broke a 1-1 deadlock immediately after halftime. Bayer would go on to win 3-1. Take a look.
And here’s a summary of his touches:
Son with a Champions League level club – and to think he is just 21 years old…
Koo Ja-Cheol in the meantime has been absorbed back to Wolfsburg after a season and a half on loan to Augsburg. Koo did his part to help Augsburg stave off relegation twice. There’s been speculation he would go on to join Park Joo-Ho at Mainz, but for the time being he is still at Wolfsburg, and on Saturday put in 55 minutes in a red card plagued match (2 for Wolfsburg – Timm Klose and Maximillian Arnold both being sent off). Koo for his part had 2 shots on goal – blocked on both attempts. UPDATE: got to see a video recap of his touches on Saturday – not too bad actually. Take a look:
Short update on Saturday’s results (2 egies are on the loose inside the Tavern that I’m currently neglecting):
In England’s Championship, Yun Suk-Young went 97 minutes and contributed to the Ranger’s efforts at promotion back to the big leagues by delivering his first assist for QPR.
38′ Great work from @syyun317 down the left-flank. His delivery into area finds Hoilett, who slots the ball home from 10 yards. 1-1 #HUDvQPR
— QPR FC (@OfficialQPR) August 10, 2013
Yun made up for his small part in the first goal conceded, Huddersfield Town’s first since promotion to the Championship this season. The game ended in a draw 1-1. You can see a brief recap here:
Over to another Championship club rebooting their promotion campaign at Bolton, Lee Chung-Yong put in 90 minutes in a 1-1 draw with Reading. Darren Pratley scored first for the Wanderers, putting them ahead in the 14th minute. But they couldn’t hold on for the win, conceding to Nick Blackman in the 51st minute.
In a friendly yesterday with Athletic Club, Kim Bo-Kyung delivered a fine pass to Cambell – he rounded the keeper to fire it home for Cardiff City. Cardiff won 2-1. Last week Kim’s lone goal beat Chievo Verona in a friendly. Skip to 3:30 – and bliss out:
UPDATE: this is coming to you a bit late (but can I call it fashionably late?) Sunday result: Park Joo-Ho made a decent debut in his first bundesliga game for Mainz – they took on Stuttgart and won 3-2. Park put in 90 minutes, a few crosses delivered, fairly solid in the left back, and good distribution. Through the magic of youtube, here’s a summary of his goals:
When is the mailbag coming out?
Soon. Hopefully. Roy and Jinseok have been extremely busy lately, and are still working on their answers. What will likely happen is I’ll post my responses, and then update the post when they send me theirs.