Sporting purchased Viktor Gyokeres from Coventry Metropolis for round $25 million. And now, a big-money transfer to one in every of Europe’s main groups feels inevitable. The Swedish striker’s explosive goal-scoring has made him one of many hottest properties in Europe and will see him turn out to be soccer’s subsequent $100 million-plus participant.
But, Premier League golf equipment seemingly missed his uncommon expertise when it was proper beneath their noses. As a substitute, Sporting Lisbon took an opportunity on Gyokeres and now stands to make a fortune after plucking him from the second tier of English soccer final yr.
Since his transfer to Portugal, he has gone on to attain 66 targets in 68 appearances — together with 23 targets in 18 this time period — and helped Sporting win the title final season.
To place the 26-year-old ahead’s membership statistics into context, this season he’s outscoring Robert Lewandowski (19 in 17 video games), Harry Kane (17 in 16) and Erling Haaland (15 in 16). Gyokeres stretches defences together with his direct runs and is lethal in entrance of purpose with rasping photographs that discover the nook of the web with unerring precision.
His spectacular numbers have sparked hypothesis he’ll quickly be on the transfer once more with golf equipment like Manchester United, Metropolis, Arsenal, Barcelona, and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) all reportedly .
Hyperlinks to United and Metropolis are comprehensible. Gyokeres’ former coach at Lisbon, Ruben Amorim, has simply taken over at United. Hugo Viana, Lisbon’s outgoing sporting director who signed him from Coventry Metropolis, is on his technique to Metropolis.
Dalibor Savic coached Gyokeres on the youth degree for Brommapojkarna, a Swedish membership with a repute for creating a few of the nation’s best-emerging gamers. “He was a late developer as a result of he was not the very best striker or the very best participant in Brommapojkarna at age 16, 17, 18, 19. We had higher gamers within the academy and so forth,” Savic, who was head coach of the membership’s Underneath-19 and U-21 groups, informed The Related Press.
Gyokeres’ first probability in England got here in 2018 when he joined Brighton — a group that focuses on creating gamers after which promoting them on for enormous revenue. Not on this event. Gyokeres was loaned first to St Pauli in Germany, then Swansea and at last Coventry, the place he sealed a everlasting transfer for round $1 million in 2021. His numbers at Brighton and through his mortgage spells didn’t level to the heights he has gone on to realize, with seven targets in 28 video games for St Pauli his finest return.
Gyokeres went on to attain 40 targets in 97 video games and take Coventry to the brink of promotion to the Premier League earlier than it will definitely misplaced a playoff remaining. That paved the best way for his transfer to Lisbon the place his performances have been inconceivable to disregard.
Proving he can rating persistently at a good increased degree would be the subsequent problem if Gyokeres follows within the footsteps of different high Swedish strikers like Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrik Larsson and strikes to one in every of Europe’s main golf equipment.
With AP inputs
