LAFC Fan Taunts Son Heung-min With 'Ni Hao' Shouts After El Tráfico Draw

Sunday’s El Tráfico should have been remembered for a playoff clincher and a last-kick overhead kick. Instead, two clips from the stands have taken over the story of LAFC’s 2-2 draw with the LA Galaxy: a fan spitting on a visiting supporter, and a fan in LAFC gear repeatedly shouting “ni hao” at Son Heung-min as the club’s own star thanked the crowd. Neither clip has drawn a public response from LAFC or MLS yet, and that silence is now part of the story too.

What happened to Son after the final whistle?

A fan decked out in LAFC gear shouted “ni hao” repeatedly at Son as he walked off the field and circled it to thank the fans after the game, the New York Post reports. The clip, posted by the X account @peachyson7, shows Son looking at the fan and glaring at him as the shouting continues. “Ni hao” is Mandarin for hello, and the Post described directing it repeatedly at a South Korean player as an insensitive and racist microaggression.

The poster added detail the video alone cannot show. She wrote that she spoke with security, but that the fan had left Section 111 by then and security said there was little they could do, the Post reports. Her caption put the question directly to the club and the league: “Since when was racism accepted in @MLS.” The same account also posted a photo of the fan with his face blurred out. Many fans identified him as a regular attendee because of how often he attends games, and called for his season-ticket access to be revoked, the Post reports. No punishment had been announced as of Monday, and the fan has not been publicly named.

What happened in the other fan incident?

The second clip is, if anything, uglier. Video circulating since Monday shows an LAFC supporter spitting on a woman in Galaxy colors during the match, SportsGossip reports, citing the New York Post and a clip captured by a photographer posting as @stpierre. In the clip, two male LAFC fans argue with a man and a woman seated in front of them, one mouths an insult at the pair, leans forward to spit at the woman’s head, then sits back down as she turns to confront him.

The clip spread fast. Gloria (@hi_lovin121) reposted it with the caption “Twitter absolutely do your thing,” and her post had climbed past 186,900 views by Monday morning, SportsGossip reports, with replies like “What a lowlife” piling up as fans tried to identify the man. The two incidents are separate, filmed by different people, but they landed in the same news cycle and they share a venue, a fixture and a question: what happens to supporters caught on camera like this.

What did the match itself produce?

A genuinely chaotic derby, which is part of why the stands overshadowed it. Joseph Paintsil scored in the 34th and 51st minutes to put the Galaxy two up, the second after Hugo Lloris spilled an Erik Thommy shot, SportsGossip reports. Denis Bouanga answered in the 53rd minute and Leo Walta levelled shortly after, and LAFC outshot the Galaxy 21-11, including 8-0 over the final half hour. Bouanga thought he had stolen the win with an overhead kick on the last kick of the match, but an offside call on Aaron Long wiped it out, just as a first-half Son goal had already been disallowed on review.

The point still mattered. It locked in LAFC’s fifth straight postseason trip and an eighth in nine seasons, SportsGossip reports, with LAFC sixth in the West on 47 points, one back of Houston and San Jose for fourth with two games left. The Galaxy, 10-11-11 on 41 points, left having led by two and settled for a tie. Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said afterwards: “Every point matters right now, I still think that.” LAFC interim coach Xavi Tamarit saw it from the other side: “I am very proud about the team, how we overcame in a really difficult situation that we didn’t deserve.”

Have LAFC or MLS responded?

Not as of Monday. SportsGossip reported that neither club nor MLS had said a word about the spitting video as of Monday, and the Post noted it remained to be seen whether LAFC would address the Son clip. That gap is what the fan reaction is really about. The clips are already public, the venue’s own rules are already written down, and the only missing piece is a decision from the club or the league about whether either supporter faces consequences.

The same pattern played out before in this rivalry, which is why the precedent matters. MLS fined the Galaxy $100,000 and suspended supporter-group privileges in July 2024 after flares were lit at the Rose Bowl, SportsGossip reports, and handed LAFC the identical penalty after flares halted the December 2023 Western Conference final. Flares and abuse are different offences, but the league has shown it will punish supporter conduct in this fixture when it decides to act.

What can the clubs actually do about it?

More than the security response described in the Son clip suggests. BMO Stadium’s own Fan Code of Conduct promises guests a match free of foul, sexist, racial, obscene or abusive language or gestures, SportsGossip reports, and warns that violations are subject to sanctions including ejection, banishment and arrest. Incidents can be reported by texting ASSIST to (213) 205-0836. A season-ticket revocation, the punishment fans are calling for in the Son case, sits squarely inside that range, and the blurred-face photo plus the Section 111 detail give the club a starting point if it chooses to investigate.

The harder question is the one the poster asked. A fan shouting a greeting in the wrong language at the wrong player is easy to dismiss as a joke, and that is exactly why the Post’s framing matters: the greeting becomes a taunt when it is aimed at a player because of how he looks, and when it is repeated after he has clearly noticed it. Son’s glare, caught on camera, is the moment the clip stops being ambiguous. He noticed, he understood, and he did not laugh it off.

What happens next?

LAFC host Minnesota United on November 1, and the Galaxy close their home slate against Austin FC on October 31, SportsGossip reports. Between now and then, the live questions are narrow and answerable: does LAFC or MLS issue a statement, does either supporter get identified and sanctioned, and does the club say anything about the security response described in the Son clip. This article will update when any of those answers land.

The wider context is worth holding onto, because this is not the first time abuse has followed Son around. Earlier this month, Coco Gauff called out racist abuse after a replayed point at the China Open, and the pattern in both cases is the same: the abuse arrives in public, on camera, and the institution involved has to decide how fast it answers. In Vinicius’s hair-pull red card at Villarreal, the on-field incident got an official process within days. The stands deserve the same speed. Fan protests can also take over a match entirely, as they did when Rayo Vallecano’s homecoming was abandoned after a paper-plane protest, and a viral fan moment can split opinion just as sharply. The difference here is that nobody is arguing about what happened. The clips are clear. Only the response is missing.