‘Taemin, the Lucky Charm’: SHINee Star Watches Son Heung-min Dismantle Austin as LAFC Win 3-1

A K-pop icon releases a falcon, a national-team captain scores and sets up two more and the night Son Heung-min overtook Lionel Messi atop the MLS assist charts had a very Korean soundtrack.

Before a single ball was kicked at BMO Stadium, a hawk took flight and the man who sent it soaring wore a jersey that read “TAEMIN.” By the final whistle, Son Heung-min had scored one, assisted two, and leapfrogged Lionel Messi to stand alone at the top of Major League Soccer’s assist rankings. Korean fans had a tidy explanation for the magic: Taemin, it turned out, is a very good luck charm.

Two Kings, One Pitch

On October 15 (Korean time), SHINee‘s Taemin walked onto the grass at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium as LAFC’s special guest and performed the club’s most distinctive ritual: the Honorary Falconer ceremony. For the uninitiated, this is no gimmick bolted onto an American sports night it’s core to LAFC’s identity. Moments before kickoff, the club releases Olly, a real falcon, to take a traditional flight around the stadium in what LAFC calls a “Celebration of Flight,” the bird symbolizing the team’s fast, aggressive, relentless style of play.

Taemin handled it with poise, wearing an official LAFC kit stamped with his name and the number 93 a nod to his birth year, 1993. Then came the image that lit up timelines across two fandoms: the K-pop star shaking hands and exchanging words with Son Heung-min, LAFC’s captain and the captain of South Korea’s national team. Two global icons, each the standard-bearer of his field, meeting on a foreign stage. It’s the kind of crossover that doesn’t need manufacturing it simply happens when Korea’s cultural and athletic exports both go world-class.

Son Heung-min’s Masterclass

If Taemin brought the ceremony, Son brought the clinic. Starting the match, the forward orchestrated LAFC’s attack with the restless movement and surgical passing that have defined his career from the Premier League to MLS. He teed up Denis Bouanga twice in the 52nd and 67th minutes before putting the result beyond doubt himself in the 72nd, a three-point haul (one goal, two assists) that touched all three of his team’s goals.

The individual milestones were just as significant. The strike was Son’s seventh goal of the season, and his two assists pushed his league tally to 15 breaking a five-way logjam that included Messi (Inter Miami, 14) to seize sole possession of the MLS assist crown. Let that sink in: in his debut MLS campaign, Son isn’t merely adapting to the league. He’s leading it in creativity, ahead of the player many still call football’s god.

For LAFC, the win carried extra weight it snapped a four-game winless run and nudged the Black & Gold within striking distance of the upper reaches of the Western Conference. Son didn’t just decorate the scoreline; he changed the team’s trajectory.

The Making of a Crossover Moment

What makes this night more than a feel-good photo op is what each man represents right now. Son’s move to MLS was watched skeptically by some a European great easing into a lesser league. Instead, he’s rewriting that narrative weekly, proving that elite vision travels, and giving the league exactly the marquee performances it signed him for. Topping Messi, even for a single week, is the kind of headline MLS has chased for years.

Taemin’s presence completes the picture. As one of K-pop’s most respected soloists and a founding member of SHINee a group widely credited with shaping the genre’s modern template his appearance signals how fluidly Korean cultural capital now moves through global sport. LAFC, a club that has leaned into cross-cultural partnerships (from Hello Kitty Night to LINE FRIENDS collaborations), knew exactly what it was doing by handing Taemin the falcon.

What’s Next for the Lucky Charm

Taemin arrives at BMO Stadium riding his own momentum. He recently wrapped the Seoul leg of his 2026–27 TAEMIN WORLD TOUR , performed September 18–20, and the tour is only beginning its global march. The title is telling: LiMiNaL takes its name from the Latin limen “threshold” or “boundary” built on the idea that a boundary isn’t an ending but a gateway where transformation begins. The U.S. leg, announced in partnership with AEG, carries him to cities including Los Angeles, with further stops across Mexico, Latin America, and Europe to follow.

A threshold, a transformation, a man standing on the edge of something new. On this night in Los Angeles, two Korean stars stood on exactly that kind of boundary one releasing a falcon, the other chasing down a legend and both looked entirely at home on the world stage. Call it a lucky charm if you like. It looked a lot more like destiny.